Entrepreneurship Experience
UMBC Idea and Innovation Competition: SPARK Track
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My Entrepreneurship Experience:
UMBC Idea and Innovation Competition
My entrepreneurship experience was to enter the UMBC Idea and Innovation competition. This falls under “Participation in an entrepreneurship competition such as UMBC ProveIt (an annual competition for student ideas about campus change)”. I entered the SPARK track for “Conserving water resources” since it related to my Grand Challenge. In this competition, I proposed bioswales to be prioritized as drainage systems, since they naturally filter water and increase greenspace, while conventional storm drains be used as secondary stormwater drainage to prevent flooding. It was a great way for me to directly apply entrepreneurial thinking to societal problems, specifically stormwater pollution. I was able to recognize the fact that bioswales are incredibly effective green water infrastructure, while still recognizing their water drainage limitations.
What are Bioswales?
image from The Watershed Project
Bioswales are like rain gardens with a little extra infrastructure. They are typically long ditches with water-hardy plants and a few layers of pervious materials such as dirt and gravel, but unlike rain gardens they contain perforated pipes. Polluted rainwater can flow into the bioswale, where it is filtered by dirt, rocks, plants, and gravel, and then that filtered water can go into a perforated pipe. The natural element of the bioswale gives the water a chance to enter local aquifers, which can help with drought, but any excess water goes into the pipe and taken away from the bioswale, which prevents flooding. That water can flow into waterways or be directed into storm drainage systems, but that is water that has been filtered, unlike the conventional storm drainage system.
Connecting to my Grand Challenge:
I entered the competition specifically to participate in the SPARK track under conserving water resources, which directly relates to providing access to clean water. After all, water conservation is a vital part of long-term access to clean water. My idea was also bioswale implementation to reduce the amount of pollution in stormwater runoff, and a major challenge to providing access to clean water is water pollution, most of which is due to polluted stormwater runoff.
How I reached Program-Wide Learning Objectives: Realistic Vision
I wanted my project to involve bioswales because I find them incredibly interesting and a lot of people do not know about them, despite the fact that they are considered to be the most effective and adaptable form of green infrastructure for stormwater runoff. My proposal was to implement bioswales in such a way that they take precedence over conventional storm drainage systems. This is because, unlike storm drains, bioswales filter water on the macro and micro pollutant level, which means that pollution can be removed from runoff before entering local waterways. However, because of the high filtration, this means that bioswales drain water at a much slower rate than storm drains, which will lead to flooding. Therefore, I proposed that bioswales take precedence while conventional storm drains be used as secondary drainage systems to reduce flooding. I also had to understand that this idea would be better implemented for urban development projects, rather than preexisting cities.
How I reached Core Learning Objectives:
Develop strategies for recognizing opportunities and identifying the tools for quality risk assessment:
Develop strategies for recognizing opportunities and identifying the tools for quality risk assessment:
I recognized that bioswales (which interest me) could be used more in the larger stormwater drainage infrastructure. I had to determine the pros and cons of bioswales opposed to storm drains in the short and long term, which is a form of quality risk assessment. I also had pitch it in such a way that people who may not care about pollution would still want to use bioswales after hearing about them.
Exhibit skills for communicating ideas in a concise and logical way:
Exhibit skills for communicating ideas in a concise and logical way:
I only had three minutes to pitch my idea, and that included a lot of explaining. I had to quickly describe the problem with polluted stormwater runoff, how and why it occurred, what bioswales are and how the operate, and how they reduce stormwater runoff. I also had to make sure to include installation considerations and the ways in which they were preferable to conventional drainage systems. In the end, that left me with about 30 seconds to pitch the larger implementation idea, but I knew they would never consider it if I did not precede it with all of that information.
Work effectively in teams focused on entrepreneurship-related projects:
Work effectively in teams focused on entrepreneurship-related projects:
While I worked on my proposal and presentation alone, I did have to reach out to the competition organizers for help. I had never done anything related to entrepreneurship before, and had only ever made and presented research presentations. I initially went to Vivian Armor for help with making the presentation, asking her everything I would need to know to make such a presentation, and then made sure to listen to the organizers at the dry run to make sure my presentation was as strong as possible. I also consulted my friends to make sure my presentation was understandable, and they gave me some advice on what to focus on or visual edits to make the presentation look better.
Apply entrepreneurial thinking to social issues and social problems:
Apply entrepreneurial thinking to social issues and social problems:
The SPARK track was for climate change solutions, and I wanted to focus on the “conserving water resources” idea. In this sense, I was being asked to apply my own entrepreneurial thinking to the societal problem of water conservation by making and pitching a presentation. I initially realized how out of my dept I was when I initially began making my presentation; midway through I realized that I was making it the same way I made my research presentations. I had to stop thinking like a researcher, and start thinking like an entrepreneur
Learning Objective of Personal Importance:
Left to right: Sarah Lehrman and Adam Baji
Apply creative and innovative thinking to solve problems:
The problem I was solving was water conservation, and my mind immediately went to bioswales since I found them to be very cool. They’re like rain gardens but with more infrastructure, aka a perforated pipe that allows water to be directed out of the bioswale. They’re already used at low levels (houses and some neighborhoods) and I wanted to figure out how they could be implemented at a larger scale. I had to combine my environmental passion and research skills to figure out how to solve the problem in a way that capitalistic businesses would be interested in.
I ended winning first place in the SPARK track, which I attribute both to the content of my presentation and the pitching skills I learned when preparing for this challenge.
Reflection on my Experience and Grand Challenge:
Entering the entrepreneurship competition already would have given me the flexibility to connect it to my grand challenge, but them providing the topic of "conserving water resources" made it much easier to pursue. I already knew about bioswales and how they worked, and the Idea competition was the perfect excuse to tell everyone about how cool they were. This was the perfect chance to fulfil a higher level challenge that also strongly related to my grand challenge. I consider this challege to be a rank 3 challenge.
Participation in an entrepreneurship competition is already a silver level grand challenge, and throughout the semester I had to sequester time outside of classes to work on it. I spent a few hours working on the proposal itself, since it only needed to be a few paragraphs long. I ended up being selected as one of the 12 total finalists, one of 4 in the SPARK track. Over the next few weeks leading up to the competition, I spent approximately 10 hours total working on and my 3-minute presentation. There was also the twenty minutes I spent with the dry-run, in which I pitched my idea to the competition organizers and they provided advice on how to improve my presentation. Although the presentation was short, I probably spent about an hour total rehearsing the presentation before presenting at the competition. The competition was two hours long. In total, I had to spent about 15 hours of my own personal time on this competition.
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