Challenge

As an R1 research institution and the premier university of the Mountain State, West Virginia University is committed to the personal and professional development of their students. Recognizing the potential for innovation and entrepreneurship in their staff, students and local community, the university administration set out to develop the LaunchLab, their early stage incubator. WVU tapped GPG to offer technical development resources to new tech ventures in addition to their own wealth of university services.

Process

We collaborated with a coalition of educators and administrators to develop a comprehensive program for cultivating technical entrepreneurship. Through an iterative series of workshops and discovery sessions, we developed a plan that paired university resources with domain expertise from the Guerrilla Product Group to empower students and faculty at all stages of the entrepreneurial cycle. We also worked with promising entrepreneurs to build out their initial products and hire early technical team members.

Results

The resulting joint venture, the LaunchLab, supported university-sponsored founders by providing entrepreneur-in-residence office hours, curriculum maps for training on modern technologies, and early-stage development services. We even taught students ourselves through an adjunct professorship!

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