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Session 2793

Inter-University Team Collaboration to Design and Market a New Product

Mark Rajai, Mel Mendelson East Tennessee State University/Loyola Marymount University

Abstract

This paper presents a joint effort between engineering students from East Tennessee State University and business students from Loyola Marymount University to design and market a sophisticated global monitoring system to monitor location of children, Alzheimer patients and other valuable items. This project was funded by grant from NCIIA and was part of a two- capstone courses developed to introduce engineering students and business students to real world problems and entrepreneurship. This invention has received extensive media coverage since its development. Over 30 million people worldwide heard about the project and its abilities through various media channels such as TV, Internet, radio, and newspapers. This paper focuses on marketing aspect of the product, which includes writing a successful business plan.

Introduction

In the real world, global out-sourcing is causing industrial products to be developed in virtual teams to reduce costs and development times 1. These needs have created the opportunity for this proposed project. Here product teams must design, manufacture, and market new products where the team members are not co-located in the same place at the same time 2. It is important to introduce this into the classroom, because virtual interactions are becoming increasingly important as separated teams jointly develop and market products.

In this project, teams from Loyola Marymount University (LMU) collaborated with teams from East Tennessee Sate University (ETSU) on joint projects. The ipTeamSuite software was used for data exchange, information sharing, messaging, group scheduling and design documentation3.

This paper focuses on one special project to design and market a sophisticated global monitoring system to monitor location of children, Alzheimer patients and other valuable items. This project was funded by a grant from the Lemelson Foundation4. The purpose of this paper is to write a successful business plan to be presented to venture capital firms to secure seed money to mass produce and market the product. In next sections the business plan is presented.

Executive Summary

Focus Systems was formed as a design and manufacturing company specializing in high technology electronic safety devices. Its management is dedicated to supplying the consumer

“Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering education Annual Conferences & Exposition Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Rajai, M., & Mendelson, M. (2001, June), Inter University Team Collaboration To Design And Market A New Product Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9469