Partner with Nonprofit Community

"Social Entrepreneurs are pioneers of innovations that benefit humanity".....The Skoll Foundation

How the Social Innovation and Commercialization process works

Identify a Cause - Our goals are to provide practical solutions to a wide range of social challenges by fostering and stimulating the students, faculty and vast resources of the OSU community. We focus on creating products that meet specific needs determined through brainstorming sessions with non-profit partners.

Develop a Business Model - We measure our success through the effective commercialization of products supported by a sound business model that produces  both a financial and social return. Working with non-profit partners we will ensure new products satisfy a specific social need. Working with manufacturing partners, we will ensure can be made and sold profitably to create alternative revenue sources for our non-profit partner and sustain our program.

Create a Solution - Multidisciplinary student teams begin the process by "identifying a cause" and creating a business model. The team then develops a specification, conceptual design, and detail design followed by prototyping, building, and validating with actual users -- iterating the design until the final product is ready for production.

Launch the Product - The launch of a successful product begins with the "identify a cause" step and creation of a broad need and ends with the formation of an effective distribution network, manufacturing and support operations. Nonprofits will benefit from the expanded awareness of their mission thru product branding and receive recurring revenue to support their cause.