Capstone
Spring 2022
Description:
In this course, students bring together interdisciplinary insights from their work throughout the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate program to shed light on innovation and entrepreneurship and the roles they play in addressing the world’s most pressing problems. The class will incorporate rich discussion, selected readings, and guest speakers addressing topics in innovation and entrepreneurship. Students will focus on applying what they have learned through the certificate curriculum to develop an innovation and entrepreneurship capstone project.
Specifically, this course focused on a client-based project. As students, we sought to develop a hiring strategy for Spring & Mulberry, a local Research Triangle Park (RTP) food startup that is seeking to change the consumer food product landscape through date-sweetened chocolates.
Learnings:
Through this class I had several valuable takeaways:
- The importance of company culture: Because we were working with a small (2 person!), early-stage (product was launched to the public midway through the semester) startup, the company’s culture had not yet been defined. The founders were interested in hiring more employees as they expanded, so this was a critical time to establish values that would lay the foundation for the company moving forward. When we spoke to the founders, they had a broad set of goals and personal values that they wanted their company to also exhibit. Based on these, we delved deep into researching other companies with similar values, past employee sentiment, and student attitudes toward employers (the focus of my team’s work). Although we were not able to define Spring & Mulberry’s culture, our findings were able to help the founders direct their focus toward how to develop one for themselves, specifically through EVP statements (below).
- Employer Value Proposition (EVP): One new concept I learned through this class is that of the Employer Value Proposition. The EVP is what the company can offer the employee (the benefits), and it serves as the employer’s brand. Put simply, a company’s EVP summarizes the reasons why someone may want to work for a company. As a start-up seeking to hire more talent, having a clear and focused EVP is critical for Spring & Mulberry’s hiring efforts. As a class we brainstormed and honed in on three EVP statements we created based on our research findings and understanding of Spring & Mulberry’s brand. Then, we put them to the test through surveying the Duke I&E community on which EVP statement was most attractive. Lastly, we presented our findings to the founders, including our suggestions on which EVP statement was best and how to further hone the EVP based on survey sentiment.
- Validating hypotheses through data: My last important learning from this course was the importance of gathering data and using it to validate hypotheses. For example, my team focused on surveying Duke students on their views on what an “ideal job” or “ideal employer” might look like. Although as a team we had our own thoughts and hypotheses on the results, we could not be sure until we had collected the data to validate it. This also was the case for collecting survey data to evaluate the EVP statements. Since all three statements were what we as a class honed in on, I was not sure which one would be most attractive to others. It was through the survey and the results that we could find evidence of one being better than the others. This process has shown me the importance and power of using data collection methods, as well as using the results to support a claim.
Artifact:
Final Client Presentation – Below is the final presentation we as a class presented to the founders of Spring & Mulberry. My team presented section three – “Ideal Employer”. I specifically focused on the “Ideal Job/Employer Values” slide, introducing and describing the survey results. I also presented the survey of the EVP section, showing the client which EVP statement was most attractive and why.
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab
