LEC Teaching Fellows and other members of the LEC team attended the VentureWell OPEN Annual Conference, which connects STEM faculty and students in an innovative atmosphere. A highlight of OPEN are its presentations – or lack thereof. Participants instead hold workshops, interactive discussions, and panels to promote creativity and engagement among conference participants. The theme of OPEN 2023 was ‘innovation for impact’ – how can we build capacity for innovation and teach it in a more effective manner.
The LEC team led two workshops and one poster session. The first workshop, ‘Design for Well-Being: Tools & Practices for Nurturing Healthier, More Compassionate Startups’ focused on emotional sustainability in entrepreneurship and was led by LEC Well Entrepreneur-in-Residence Amelia Coffaro. This workshop was the only one at the OPEN that focused on wellbeing and mental sustainability, and it garnered a large amount of interest. Many participants found it to be a pioneering and unique experience.
Amelia Coffaro (left) and Tiera Trammell (right)
The second workshop was led by LEC Teaching Fellows Dr. AkkeNeel Talsma, Dr. Jeana Holt, and LEC Director of Innovation Dr. Ilya Avdeev. Titled ‘Innovation in Scrubs: What Can We Learn from How Nurses Innovate on the Job?,’ it focused on their shared experience teaching professional students in the nursing program. Many of these students are working nurses, returning to school and preparing to take leadership roles. As a result of their time in the field, these professional students have abundant life experience and live in the problem space – hospitals and clinics. These students have the unique capability to design for people who don’t live in the problem space with a perspective that many non-professional students lack. This hands-on workshop used a hackathon structure, incorporating real tools that nurses use such as medicine cups and IV drips to simulate actual nurse routines. Dr. Holt reflected on the construction of the workshop: “[Dr. Avdeev, Dr. Talsma] and I met several times to discuss how we would share our experience embedding/threading innovation and design thinking in the College of Nursing graduate programs…we wanted the workshop participants to gain a sense of what it is like to be a beside nurse. We had the participants respond to two different nursing scenarios that purposely may have frustrated them due to limited supplies and time constraints that the activity proposed.” Dr. Holt also mentioned that she and Dr. Talsma were two of only four nurses at the conference.
This workshop was one of ten selected by VentureWell to be a ‘toolkit’ presentation. The inspiration behind these toolkits is to allow other groups to integrate ideas into their process, and were demonstrated at the United States Patents and Trademarks office. Two awards were given exclusively for toolkit presentations: Most Likely to Adopt and Most Innovative Toolkit. ‘Innovation in Scrubs’ was awarded the Most Innovative Toolkit prize, and a video interview with the team will be available soon on VentureWell’s website.
Dr. AkkeNeel Talsma (left), Dr. Jeana Holt (middle), and Dr. Ilya Avdeev (right) accept the award for Most Innovative Toolkit
The LEC team weren’t the only ones holding workshops at OPEN, however. Several speakers held discussions on topics ranging from racial equity in higher education to nature-based solutions to sustainability challenges. A particularly memorable workshop was a new session held by the Emergent Futures Lab entitled ‘F*ck Ideas: How to Innovate After the Failure of Ideation – A Workshop and Discussion on a New Approach to Engaged Innovation and Entrepreneurship.’ Dr. Avdeev spoke on his experiences with the workshop: “The thesis was that if you want to be truly innovative, the idea can’t come from your head – if you can think of it, it’s not innovative.” Dr. Avdeev went on to draw parallels with the idea that innovation happens outside of you to a scientific experiment, happening with a given phenomenon. The workshop used a common team-building activity – building a structure using marshmallows and spaghetti noodles – with a twist. After many groups constructed their buildings using triangles (a very stable structure), three-sided shapes were banned from all edifices. The teams then continued, with many implementing rectangles, which were then banned, then arches, and so on – each time further restricting the shapes teams could use to build their structures.
Eventually, the designs curved and twisted into unique shapes. By the final round, all traditional building styles and shapes had been eliminated – the final design had to come naturally. Dr. Avdeev described their structure as ‘giving the team ideas’ during the process of creating it. “The structure was helping us to brainstorm like it was a part of our team.” The final buildings were unlike any that had existed prior to the experiment – they had achieved true innovation: a solution (or structure, in this case) that could not have been conceived of at the outset of the activity. This workshop emphasized the importance of constructive constraints in design, and can be applied to many different fields.
The VentureWell OPEN Conference showcased the value of innovative thinking and the power of connecting people. Dr. Holt emphasized the importance of interconnectedness in innovation: “Everyone should consider how they may benefit from being part of a group that takes a social and just approach to innovation and entrepreneurship.” Dr. Talsma agreed, adding: “The conference was arranged to maximize connecting with other attendees and share our experiences. It was great to travel to VentureWell with UWM colleagues and having an opportunity to connect again and strengthening our cross-campus connections.” Dr. Avdeev’s two main takeaways from the event were his pride of his amazing colleagues, and the ideas presented in the Emergent Future Labs’s workshop. “Every time we attend the VentureWell convention, we always walk away having learned something.” LEC Program Director Tiera Trammell echoed this sentiment. “Networking with people in innovative spaces gives us fresh ideas to bring back with us to UWM.”