PSU's Sparkplug program provides $500 grants to student groups to fund crowd-sourced funding campaigns for their ideas on platforms like Kickstarter. This helps students build prototypes, create marketing videos, and get web hosting space. One successful group, SmartPurse, used their grant for advertising and raised over $5k on IndieGoGo to further develop their flexible purse design. The Sparkplug program aims to ignite student ideas and move them towards commercialization through collaboration across disciplines.

1. PSU Sparkplug
Igniting student ideas
Matthew Poese and Liz Kisenwether
Penn State University’s Engineering Leadership and
Entrepreneurship Programs

2. Problem
• Student groups have good ideas
– rarely move them forward
– meager resources for parts to build prototypes
Solution
• A funding platform to capitalize an idea
– students articulate a value proposition
– students enlist stakeholders
– stakeholders back the project
• typical contribution is $5-$50

3. SparkPlug
• Give a $500 grant to student groups
– groups mount a crowd-sourced funding drive
• Kickstarter, Indie-Go-Go
– faculty advisor keeps them on track
– use the grant to:
• buy materials for prototype
• shoot a video
• buy advertisement
• get web hosting space

4. Application
• Short, simple
• Evaluate the value proposition
– is it suited for Kickstarter or similar?
– does it appear to have a market?
• ask for a quick market survey as first step
• Evaluate the functionality
– Students have big dreams
– Try to fund reasonable pieces of the dream

5. SmartPurse
• An active indiegogo campaign
• Flex-funding
– not an all-or-nothing deal
– Goal is $5k
• Established new relationship
with a manufacturer near PSU
• Used her SparkPlug grant to
buy advertising in Vogue to
coincide with indiegogo
campaign
• Dreams of raising $100k with
the campaign
• From an educational
standpoint, already a success

6. PSU Ecosystem
Sequence of courses that focus on idea
generation/evaluation
Get market reaction using SparkPlug
Form a company in Lion Launch Pad

7. Other Connectivity
• SparkPlug team sponsors an engineering
senior design team
– Business students have good idea
– hack a prototype
– use engineering senior design team to:
• clean up prototype
• create a design-for-manufacture

8. Clipboard+

9. What we’ve seen
• Seeding student ideas leads to:
– Increased collaboration between students of
many disciplines
– Increased self-efficacy
– Like an internship:
• experience non-academic lessons
– Order fulfillment
– Customer service
– Inventory management
– Production problems