Student Track

This is a challenging but critical first step. GW’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship invites our entire community to attend a short introductory workshop, offered monthly, to learn how savvy innovators take this first step - they talk to humans! It sounds simple, but this method is central to Agile Software Development, Design Thinking, and Lean Startup concepts.

We invite anyone who hopes to solve a global problem, start a new business, or develop a new product to join us. Even if your ideas aren’t fully formed, or you haven’t yet assembled a team.

At OIE, we’ve found a significant link between increased hours spent with a mentor and eventual entrepreneurial success. Mentoring consists of ongoing engagement with an innovator which can begin well before an idea is even formed, and last through the development of business models, and into the acceleration process.

Our structured mentoring helps an innovator achieve important “milestones”, and establishes a long-term bond between a team and their dedicated Mentor-in-Residence.

The GW New Venture Competition (NVC) provides every GW student, faculty, staff, and alumni with a real-world educational experience in developing, testing, and launching their own startups, businesses, and social ventures.

The competition is open to every GW student in one of five tracks: Consumer Goods and Services, Business Goods and Services, Social Innovation, Healthcare and Life Sciences, and Explorer.

GW’s three-week Lean Startup training and Milestone-Based Mentorship help innovators explore the commercial viability of their idea through direct interaction with their intended customers – learning their customers’ needs, and examining how those needs could best be fulfilled through market offerings (“customer discovery”).

By breaking down entrepreneurship into concrete and specific milestones, GW’s Lean Startup curriculum promotes techniques which identify customer segments, validate value propositions, and ultimately build successful go-to-market strategies.