We just held our first class last Thursday and, unsurprisingly, the students got a rude awakening in how different this course will be from others they have taken at grad school. In a sweltering room at Columbia’s Engineering School, we kicked things off with an overview of the class. Hacking for Energy is unique to other courses in that it is designed to simultaneously educate students about entrepreneurship and the energy sector. The first half of each class will be a traditional Lean LaunchPad style presentation and feedback session, where students present their Business Model Canvas every week and get feedback from our panel of experienced entrepreneurship judges. The second half of each class will be lectures about the energy sector led by Travis Bradford, the Director of the Energy and Environment Concentration at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Travis is a thought leader in how to teach energy and environmental topics, and he also helped launch Greentech Media and the Carbon War Room. The students are getting a real treat learning from him. We then introduced the students to the entrepreneurship instructors and mentors that are on hand to help out with the course. When we solicited for additional teaching talent to participate in the class, we received an overwhelmingly positive response from top teachers and mentors in entrepreneurship. We are pretty excited about the instructional talent we have on hand. Entrepreneurship Instructors
Student Team Mentors
Given the size of the class, Hacking for Energy has an incredible suite of instructional resources, with 7 entrepreneurship instructors and 6 mentors for the 6 teams. One thing that we will be on the lookout this semester is whether the students will take advantage of the resources that we have gathered, and whether they will take their advice to heart. Prior to kicking off the student presentations, we stressed a couple of key important notes that will guide how we will run the class (and how students should approach the class). Diving right in: The Student Presentations As mentioned before, the student presentations comprise half of each class session, and are modeled after the NSF I-Corps “relentlessly direct” presentation and feedback style. Prior to kicking off this section, we stressed some key considerations that they should keep in mind, both in how we run the class and how they should approach it.
We started the student presentations, and recognized quickly that Lean LaunchPad and its Question and Answer-style was new to most of the students taking the class. It led to some comical interactions between the students, teaching team, and instructors. We also love that the mentors jumped right in and gave their 2 cents as well. Some gems from Class 1: A student referring to their “Team Slide” - “I guess my expertise got me the title of “Chief Scientist”, so that is great!” Another student: “We did not realize what the colors {on the BMC} meant, but now we know!” While one team was describing their solution: Instructor A: “I have no idea what you are doing” Instructor B: “I second that!” When a presenting team started talking about their desire for lots of data, a mentor chimed in and said, “Don’t go and just try to get data, you have to go to talk to customers. If you collect a lot of data that is not relevant to the customers, it is useless.” It was great to see the mentors jumping in to support the teaching team/instructors and double down on our mantra: listen to the customers! Here are the first week of presentations: Team Li-Ion NYU is aiding NYU’s Office of Sustainability as they transition their vehicle fleet to electric vehicles. Team Aggregen is working with IBM to try and change the aggregator pricing model to allow for the bundling, buying, and trading of energy assets. Team EVE is helping GE to better match EV infrastructure with customers that need to charge. Team PowYorker is figuring out if there is a way to better monitor Con Edison’s electricity and gas infrastructure assets. Team ReAct is building an analytical app with EPRI to better connect users to their smart devices. Team Sustainable Catalyst Group is determining how SolarCity can best build a “Shared Solar” model for their customers. Getting ready for next week: Customer Discovery and Interview-style. After the presentations, we dove right into teaching students how to effectively conduct interviews for their customer discovery. Our inspiration/predecessor, Stanford’s Hacking for Defense, had students conduct 10 initial interviews prior to their course’s start. We decided against that because we recognized that most of these students have not been trained in Lean LaunchPad or effective interviewing. We discussed well-trodden recommendations and addressed common mistakes.
One thing we will be on the lookout for: if the students change (or don’t change) their interview techniques in the coming weeks. “I could not have done this without…..” Finding and matching the best mentors. Finally, we ended the class with matching the teams with mentors. Rather than doing a more traditional speed-dating meet-and-greet session, we decided to have each mentor work with a student team to review and critique the transcripts of teams from outside the class who had recorded their customer interviews, and then rotate to a different team after five minutes. Though it involved a lot of preparation, we liked this exercise because it gave the students and mentors an opportunity to observe each other’s work and decision-making style while also learning important interviewing techniques. In the end, it allows them to make an educated decision in who they want to work with for the next 14 weeks. At the end of class, we definitely felt the excitement in the air (one student even exclaimed in the hall, “Wow, this class is like the real world!”) and we hope this energy level stays up the coming weeks. Stay tuned weekly and follow us along on this journey.
Lessons Learned - Class 1
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AuthorThis is the class blog of the Spring 2017 Hacking for Energy class. Expect updates, thoughts, and musings from the Hacking for Energy teaching team. Archives
May 2018
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