As an engineering major, I am constantly involved with developing unique technologies whether it’s through the work on my project team or through my coursework. Innovation is a key part of the engineering culture that allows students to harness their creative and technical skills into creating important and useful products. By being immersed in such an environment, engineers begin to generate new ideas for a business/mobile app/or website that they want to launch, and soon they begin building a startup. Startups are the reason so many engineers and non-engineering majors turn into entrepreneurs at such a young age because they take their learnings directly from school and translate it into a real-world application. Dan Schwartz’s presentation on the Jacobs Technicon Cornell Institute delineated the importance of entrepreneurship and startups to the work that college grads pursue after college.

The Technicon Institute is a stepping stone into immersing yourself completely in the startup or engineering culture. Schwartz emphasized that college grads don’t often get constructive feedback on the projects that they are working on, and in order to be successful in the real world, it is necessary that students get honest feedback from their professors. The faculty at the Cornell Technicon institute offer such feedback to their students, so that they can flourish in the startup community. When students begin their startups, they are often unsure about the decisions that they have to make in order to increase the value/importance of their company, and that’s when the Technicon Institute can offer support to its students. By being part of a diverse and innovative culture at this institute, students engage in solving real world problems to improve their understanding of engineering, business, and human interaction- three very important aspects to running a startup