E(I) Lab
The Carolina E(I) Lab is a six-month experiential program designed to expose graduate students, professional students and postdocs across UNC to the entire lifecycle of innovating a product with the proper product-market fit. E(I) participants will participate in a ‘hackathon’ style weekend-long events where they will form small teams of 4-8 members to develop innovative solutions to pre-identified unmet challenges in the healthcare space. Over the subsequent six months, the team will work together with faculty mentors, to build the prototypes to their solutions, as well as learn and apply the I-Corps curriculum, including business model canvas and customer discovery processes, to identify suitable product-market fits. From this iterative process of vetting innovative ideas and redesigning/executing prototypes, the students will gain hands-on experience with developing a viable commercial product as well as the process of entrepreneurship and innovation. At the conclusion of the program, teams will present their progress to a panel of judges. The top teams will receive monetary awards, including a potential grand prize that can be invested in startup companies.