Photo: Kadyn Collins
Texas Tech’s Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources brought students and agricultural leaders together today, Oct. 6, for a program of intensive collaboration centered on real-world challenges facing industry.
'What makes this event special is the amount of meaningful time our students and industry partners spend working side-by-side.'
The 'Industry Innovation Challenge Powered by Davis College' turned the Texas Tech Club at Galaxy Stadium into a one-day collaborative environment where students and industry professionals work side-by-side to understand problems, explore possibilities and develop solutions.
More than 35 Davis College students took the opportunity to participate, while some 30 agricultural and industry professionals representing a broad cross-section of the sector served as pitch partners, mentors and judges throughout the event.
This year’s Challenge centered on real-world problems presented by two Pitch Partners: RanchBot Monitoring Solutions and Continental Dairy Facilities Southwest. Students worked in interdisciplinary teams to explore those challenges, conducted customer discovery, developed potential solutions and ultimately presented their recommendations to the companies and a panel of judges.
“What makes this event special is the amount of meaningful time our students and industry partners spend working side-by-side,” said Cele Stone, senior director of strategic partnerships and innovation at Davis College.
Photos: Kadyn Collins
“At a career fair, an employer may have only a few minutes with a student," she said. "During the Industry Innovation Challenge, they have hours to watch students think, ask questions, work through uncertainty, collaborate and solve problems. At the same time, our students are building relationships with agricultural leaders they might never otherwise have the opportunity to work with in this way.”
That interaction was central to the design of the challenge. Participating professionals represented a range of perspectives across production agriculture, agricultural finance, commodity organizations, government, startups, higher education and other sectors, giving students exposure to the breadth of careers, expertise and leadership within agriculture.
The day began with the pitch partners presenting authentic challenges facing their organizations and industries. Students then received a crash course in innovation and customer discovery before forming interdisciplinary teams around the challenges.
Rather than immediately jumping to solutions, teams were encouraged to identify assumptions, talk with potential customers and stakeholders, and better understand the underlying problem before determining what an effective solution might look like.
Photos: Kadyn Collins
Throughout the day, industry professionals, agricultural leaders and faculty members rotated among the teams, serving as mentors and customer-discovery participants. The structure allowed students to test assumptions and gather perspectives while giving industry participants an opportunity to observe how students approach complex problems.
As teams gathered evidence and develop their proposals, mentors challenged their thinking, introduced new perspectives and helped them refine their ideas.
The format provided students with an experiential-learning environment where classroom knowledge is applied to problems without predetermined answers. It also created a different type of connection between Davis College and the agricultural industry; one built around working together rather than simply networking.
For industry participants, that meant an opportunity to engage directly with students from across Davis College disciplines and see their skills, perspectives and work styles firsthand. For students, it meant access to agricultural professionals who can serve not only as mentors during the challenge, but as connections to industries, organizations and career opportunities across the region and beyond.
The day concluded with student teams pitching their solutions directly to the industry partners and a panel of judges. Members of the winning team each received a $500 scholarship.
CONTACT: Cele Stone, Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships & Innovation, Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Texas Tech University at (806) 834-6266 or Cele.Stone@ttu.edu
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