The Entrepreneurship Competency within the Grand Challenges Scholars Program is designed to ensure that students understand how innovative ideas become scalable, real-world solutions. Engineering breakthroughs alone are not sufficient to address global challenges; solutions must also be economically viable, market-ready, and capable of sustainable implementation.
This competency focuses on developing an entrepreneurial mindset, emphasizing the transition from invention to innovation. Students learn how to:
Identify unmet customer needs and opportunities to create value
Develop new products, technologies, or services
Construct preliminary business models
Validate market interest and economic feasibility
Consider scalability and long-term sustainability
Students typically complete FSE 301: Entrepreneurship and Value Creation, or they may substitute an approved upper-division project-based entrepreneurship course or substantial entrepreneurial experience (75–150+ hours). Approved experiences must demonstrate meaningful engagement in business model development, opportunity recognition, customer discovery, and market validation.
For my Health theme, I fulfill the Entrepreneurship Competency through the Health Entrepreneurship Accelerator Lab (HEALab) & Swift Medical Carts, a substantial health-focused entrepreneurial experience in which I helped design, develop, and launch a medical product venture. This experience involved identifying a clinical need, creating a value proposition, developing a business model, validating customer interest, and transitioning from prototype to company formation. Some of the highlights from this experience include:
Co-founded a registered LLC focused on improving hospital workstation design
Collaborated with HonorHealth to identify real clinical workflow challenges
Contributed as a co-inventor on a pending patent
Advanced a concept from early ideation to prototype and venture development
Through this process, I gained firsthand experience in translating biomedical innovation into a viable healthcare solution, reinforcing that impactful health technologies must be technically sound, economically feasible, and scalable to serve diverse populations.