{"id":10038,"date":"2012-01-17T19:26:16","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T19:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=10038"},"modified":"2012-01-17T19:26:16","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T19:26:16","slug":"dont-wait-to-graduate-to-build-a-business-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/01\/dont-wait-to-graduate-to-build-a-business-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Wait to Graduate to Build a Business Empire!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Student innovators won&#8217;t want to miss the opportunity to compete in the inaugural <em><a href=\"http:\/\/iq.innovationq.org\/\">Innovation Quest<\/a><\/em> (iQ) contest at UConn.\u00a0 Top contenders will have a shot at up to $15,000 in cash award money along with an expenses-paid six-week summer immersion \u201cincubator\u201d program at the Storrs campus, where they will receive hand-on mentorship, coaching and networking to more fully develop their business plans.<\/p>\n<p>Students and teams across all UConn campuses are invited to compete in this inaugural event.\u00a0 There is no cost to participate in the program.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/innovators.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10096 img-responsive lazyload\" title=\"innovators\" data-src=\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/innovators.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"175\" height=\"173\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 175px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 175\/173;\" \/><\/a>A <strong>kickoff workshop<\/strong> will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, <strong>February 1<\/strong> in the Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE) Building. During the workshop, students will receive a variety of tips on preparing for the competition, refining their preliminary business plans and defining what makes their idea novel and marketable. Monitor the engineering website for details.<\/p>\n<p>The UConn liaison for the iQ competition is entrepreneur Eric Knight, who recently joined UConn\u2019s <em>Springboard Program<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Innovation Quest<\/em> competition began in 2005 at the California Polytechnic Institute (Cal Poly).\u00a0 UConn is the first university beyond Cal Poly to host the competition. View the iQ contest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engr.uconn.edu\/pdf\/Innovation_Quest_flyer_1-12-12.pdf\">announcement here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The impetus behind bringing the iQ to Storrs was UConn School of Business alumnus Keith Fox (\u201880), one of the organization\u2019s five Managing Partners, who has retained close ties with UConn throughout his career. \u00a0Keith serves on the Advisory Board of UConn\u2019s School of Business as well as the UConn Foundation. He began his career with Apple Computer and then joined Cisco Systems, where he was Vice President of Worldwide Corporate Marketing. Later, he founded and served as CEO of Brandsoft, an enterprise software and consulting company focused on brand management.<\/p>\n<p>At UConn, the iQ organization is represented by <em>Springboard\u2019s<\/em> Eric Knight along with Rita Zangari, Director of the Office of Technology Commercialization and Dr. Mary Holz-Clause, Vice President of Economic Development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Student innovators won&#8217;t want to miss the opportunity to compete in the inaugural Innovation Quest (iQ) contest at UConn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[2492],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[48],"class_list":["post-10038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engr","tag-innovation-quest"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 00:55:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10038"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=10038"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}