IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2021 - 12

Entrepreneur Viewpoint
by Issa Batarseh
Academic Entrepreneurship: The NSF
I-Corps Program-Case Study Part II
I
n the second part of this twopart
article series, I would like to
share with you my team's experience
and the lessons we learned by
participating in the National Science
Foundation (NSF) sponsored
I-Corps program. The eight weeks
we spent in the program's first
cohort at the University of Central
Florida (UCF) ultimately led to the
establishment of my third spin-off
company, Tech-e-book.
I n part one of the series (see IEEE
Power Electronics Magazine, March
2021, p.14), I presented how the idea
of developing and deploying content
for an entire technical book on a digital
platform was born from the need
to transform the conventional, longtrodden
path of printed-textbook
learning and teaching into a format
with unlimited potential to engage
students in exciting, absorbing, and
challenging ways. After years of research
in STEM educational content
development, innovation, and the
quest for venture capital funding, my
team and I decided to participate in
the UCF I-Corps program. We benefited
greatly by avoiding significant financial
and time-draining mistakes.
The I-Corps Program
During the I-Corps program, our team
practiced evidence-based entrepreneurship
as we learned how to use the
business model canvas (BMC) to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2021.3099466
Date of current version: 13 September 2021
define the customer base (i.e. the market)
and the business model itself
(how we would generate revenue).
Course lectures were available online
at Udacity.com before the weekly
meetings. The course activities centered
around building a BMC by
addressing nine fundamental elements
of a business: customer value proposition,
customer segments, channels,
customer relationships, revenue
streams, key resources, key partners,
key activities, and cost structure. Each
team spent a significant amount of
time during the program speaking with
at least 10 customers each week with
each conversation focusing on a specific
part of the BMC to determine
whether anyone other than team members
would want to use our ebook
platform. We also engaged the educational
interest of students majoring in
STEM disciplines to challenge our theories
of how the end user might use it.
Moreover, the team explored the commercial
feasibility of the new educational
platform tools, after all expenses
were considered. Are we still able to
drive a reasonable profit margin?
The three key components of the
I-Corps methodology to build the
BMC-(1) identifying the value proposition,
(2) developing a minimal viable
product (MVP), and (3) engaging
in customer discovery-are discussed
below.
The Value Proposition
We describe our company's value proposition-the
unique value our compa12
IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE z September 2021
ny's product delivers to the targeted
customer segment-as an ever-evolving,
enriching, educational experience.
The expertly designed interactive
online modules deliver teaching materials
and customized learning strategies
for students based on their learning
ability. Imagine giving students an
opportunity to explore their learning
material beyond the confines of a traditional
textbook and allowing them to
customize the difficulty level of practice
problems to improve their understanding
of complex STEM course
content. We not only offer eLearning
but we also offer me-learning!
We channel these digital interactions
using interactive input portals
that allow our team to build a virtual
community of readers. These openended
conversations provide opportunities
to constantly improve the
educational content through reader
feedback, collaboration, and readercontributed
materials. The development
of the digital technology platform
framework is independent of any
specific textbook therefore we have
the versatility to support virtually any
technical material.
Minimal Viable Product
Fortunately, through initial external
and internal funding, our team had
already designed and implemented a
demonstration website that previewed
a few functional sections of my electrical
circuit book that was under
development. This MVP was well
received by the program instructors
http://www.Udacity.com
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