From Idea to Impact: A Case Study for Sustainable Innovation

This paper describes an on-going non-traditional educational experience of working on an intelligent water-conservation project at Florida Atlantic University. It is unique in the sense that the working settings are different from an ordinary research and development project. We have been working with a private investor and entrepreneur who came up with the original idea. He has been very involved in the project with business, humanitarian, environmental and educational goals in mind. In addition to providing students a rich academic experience, a goal of this project is for the students to gain practical, “hands-on” knowledge of how to create a commercial product, both from a technical and business perspective. We follow the project as it progresses from inception to commercial promise and share experiences of technical ups and downs, teamwork and communication issues, problem-solving activities, the overlap between academic and nonacademic interests, benefits to students, and lessons learned. The paper includes discussion of innovative, entrepreneurial, and practical components of the project. Students were engaged in both technical and business development, including prototyping, customer relations, product testing, and financing. We discuss the difficulty of academic assessment of this project and share observations and suggestions for improvements to future projects of this type. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a new intelligent residential and commercial water sprinkling system that uses readily available internet-based weather information, and with no local sensors. We foresee that the eventual product will be of significant value to society at large by conserving a significant amount of fresh water.