MIXing it up: Student innovators find a place to create
It has been busy year at the Mason Innovation Exchange (MIX). Since the George Mason University makerspace opened in its new space in Horizon Hall in September 2021, it has seen a lot of traffic—more than 9,000 visitors in spring 2022—and has some successes to report.
The MIX, a part of Mason Enterprise, is home to a makerspace and fabrication lab, a digital media lab, and a startup incubator, offering creative thinkers everything from metal fabrication to business mentoring. It is open to all members of the Mason community regardless of their major or affiliation.
They also hired two in-house mentors: Nantuit founder and CEO Rashed Hasan, who is also executive-in-residence at Mason’s School of Business, and George Siragusa, a senior business counselor at Mason Enterprise Center’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Gisele Stolz, senior director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programs at Mason, also serves as a mentor. These mentors meet one-on-one with student entrepreneurs and provide a range of business and entrepreneurship advice.
While the MIX never had any problems attracting students in their old space in the original Fenwick Library, Stolz said the new space allows them to be more deliberate in their planning.
Among the things that are definitely working is the small business incubator. Part of the new Horizon Hall space includes the start-up incubator space, which has 10 desks, including eight dedicated to student-led businesses. Stolz calls these desks “high-value real estate in the heart of the Fairfax Campus.”
In addition to having a dedicated space in proximity to all the amenities available in the makerspace, teams in the incubator also have access to the mentors and professional development.
In the spring Stolz and her team organized a shortened version of the Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP), a program offered by the Virginia SBDC to help Virginia-led startups, for student and faculty entrepreneurs.
The three-week mini ICAP was taught by SBDC’s Senior Business Counselor David Powell and ICAP Director Josh Green. The lessons had a remarkable effect on student entrepreneurs.
At the start of the academic year, the MIX had seven student companies in residence. Among them is DigiMicro, the company started by information technology major Areej Ali and electrical engineering major Kanwal Ahmad. DigiMicro is a Web3.0-based technology, single sign-on service that would allow consumers to access niche articles with micropayments, a small fee of $1 or less, versus having to pay for a full subscription to access just a few articles.
The mini ICAP and learning about business strategies like a minimal viable product (MVP) has made an impact on Ali.
“I haven't really haven’t had a lot of experience with business,” said Ali, who is working on her master of science in cybersecurity through Mason’s Accelerated Master’s Program. “I thought once a technology is made it's kind of hard to change it. But what I learned through the courses was your minimum viable product is destined to change. You have to be able to adapt and change in order to be successful.”
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