Through the Koch Innovation Challenge and the Shocker Design Experience, Koch and WSU are empowering freshmen students to grow their entrepreneurial mindsets.
You could feel the tension in the air as participants in the 10th annual Koch Innovation Challenge at Wichita State University filed into the ballroom at the Rhatigan Student Center. In just a few minutes, they’d find out which teams would make it to the finals.
The announcement would come at the end of what had been months of learning, experimenting, development, failure, pivots and more development as teams of freshmen from different backgrounds worked to come up with a product or solution to a real-world problem. After all that work, the final challenge is distilling it into a 5-minute pitch that demonstrates the genius of their idea to a panel of judges.
The competition is a culminating event for students who have spent the last year in what is now known as the Shocker Design Experience — a unique program for first-year students from any major. The program, initially developed through the support of Koch, is designed to help students learn how to tackle a meaningful problem, develop an entrepreneurial mindset and gain skills essential for success in any career. For students, this means access to real-world mentorship, a hands-on problem-solving experience and a network of professionals invested in their success.
Part of the partnership includes providing volunteer mentors and judges. Ashlie Weber is a project manager with Koch-Glitsch and a WSU alumna who volunteered to judge during the finals this year. She didn’t participate in the program when she was at WSU, but said she wished she had, especially after seeing how it shaped the students.
“Sometimes it’s easy to get focused on just your major and your classes, but I really think this pushes them outside of their comfort zone and makes them expand what they’re thinking about and how that plays into a business model,” she said.
James Dutcher, a Flint Hills Resources employee, listens to a group of finalists pitch their idea.
James Dutcher, another Koch employee-volunteer judge, said all the competitors demonstrated the application of Principled Entrepreneurship™, something all Koch employees are asked to apply regardless of their roles.
“Regardless of where you’re working or what you’re doing, you should operate with an entrepreneurial mindset,” he said. “This competition makes them think about the bigger picture, and how they can create benefit not just for themselves, but others — and when you see a problem, it helps them ask, how can we solve that?”
Several students’ knees nervously bounced up and down as Samantha Corcoran, Koch Innovation Challenge program lead, made her way to the podium to announce the finalists.
This year’s group of finalists included a wide range of ideas, from electrolyte supplements to an adaptive reading curriculum app.
The finalists had to pitch their ideas again, this time in front of all their classmates and a larger panel of judges. In the end, the judges named team JC Lift as the overall winners.
A member of team JC Lift carries their robot prototype to the stage to receive their medals.
JC Lift developed an autonomous robot designed to store, lift and move pallets. Their main goal was to increase safety at warehouses by eliminating the potential hazards associated with people interacting with forklifts. Members of the team said one of the most important lessons they learned from the project was the value of feedback.
“Entrepreneurship can be really bumpy,” said Landen Bouma. “It’s not as simple as brainstorming and then just taking the idea and boom, boom, boom, making it happen. There’s so much change and innovation that has to take place.”
Putting their entrepreneurial mindset into practice through experimentation, iteration, creative problem-solving and finding the best knowledge helped them go from identifying a need to an award-winning potential product.
“It’s surreal looking back at where we started and what we have now — a fully functional robot,” said Jacob Pando. “My goal in life is to be able to innovate and really push the boundaries of what is possible, and this project has really inspired me.”
JC Lift will go on to compete for WSU on a national level at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Pitch Competition in November.
And next year, a new group of freshmen will file into that ballroom, knees bouncing, waiting to hear their names called. Win or lose, they’ll leave with something more durable than a trophy — the firsthand knowledge that they can identify a real problem, build something from scratch, and improve people’s lives — and that’s a skill Koch and WSU are betting will matter long after the competition ends.
