Nieshaal Thambipillay ’22 — Firstly, I would like to thank the alumni who have made the CIBE Business Innovation Program possible through their donations to the college, as well as the Lilly Endowment for funding this fantastic experience.
The Innovation Interns started the week on Monday with our first Mini Pitch for our mobile app, MatchFit. We traveled to Carmel on Tuesday morning to meet with Tony Unfried ’03 at Archon Tech Strategies. During our visit, Tony critiqued our app ideas and highlighted the importance of market research. Tony spoke about his mistake of neglecting to ask his target market if they would pay for the IV Bus, which failed.
After lunch, we visited Jim Engledow ’78, the President and CEO of the Engledow Group. Jim is incredibly humble and gave a presentation about the Engledow Group’s history. We were given a tour, learned about the Engledow Group’s operations size, and the size of the landscaping industry.
On Wednesday, we presented our Consulting Projects before leaving for South Bend. The Innovation Interns are using the Lean A3 Thinking method to solve our respective consulting group’s pains. From here, we learned the importance of presenting tangible data to draw attention to the issue.
On Thursday, we began our site visits in South Bend. We started the day by visiting Shane Fimbel ’02, Jim Abercrombie ’02, and Mitch Krum ’18 at Trek10. Shane, Jim, and Mitch spoke about their work at Trek10 and their paths after Wabash. Shane and Jim also talked about Cloud Platforms, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS). My interest in AWS peaked when Shane and Jim told us about the potential growth of the Cloud Platform industry. We were also taught that our 20’s are for learning while our 30’s are for earning.
After Trek10 was enFocus where we visited Pat Jones ’15 and Jacob Burnett ‘15, as well as the interns, Joey Karczewski ’20, Darian Phillips ’20, and Tyler Ramsey ’21. Pat spoke about enFocus’s work structure, and I could not help but draw similarities between enFocus and the CIBE. However, enFocus workers differentiate themselves by spending 70% of their working time on a primary project and 30% on a personal project. To conclude our trip, we visited Todd Hoogland ’15 at Cup Print, where we learned about its operations as well as the size of the cup making industry in the United States and Ireland. We also learned about the ESTEEM Program at Notre Dame.
On Friday, Kasimir “Kaz” Koehring ‘18 visited us at Fusion 54 to discuss Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Before work on Friday, we read about “professional sons,” which I related to a more in-depth mentorship system. Kaz spoke to the interns about his experiences at Wabash and at IBM. Following the discussion, I spent some time talking to Kaz about his experiences living in Chicago and studying abroad in China, while I spoke about my experiences growing up in Malaysia and my transition to Wabash.
I am looking forward to the coming weeks of the Business Innovation Program!
