2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper describes the Palm Institute GreenLab and its first GreenLab Startup Weekend to encourage and support entrepreneurial student teams. Palm Institute is a 10-year-old liberal arts university-college in Ghana, whose mission is to educate ethical and excellent leaders in Africa. The Palm GreenLab is an innovation and incubation lab designed to unearth talents that solve wicked problems with creative ideas, nurture and scale the growth of some of the most ambitious entrepreneurial projects in the world. The GreenLab plans to provide an array of offerings and support for student entrepreneurship. A Stage-Gate model details the activities and expectations for projects at each level of maturity.
In Fall 2022, the Palm GreenLab ran its maiden Startup Weekend - a two day intensive experience in which students pitched and evaluated ideas, formed teams, worked to identify and address important elements and issues for their project, and present their project.
This paper briefly describes the current and planned structure of the GreenLab; describes the Startup Weekend; reports results from students' reflections and interviews; and outlines lessons learned and future directions.
Projects included agricultural products, education software, and election software. During the weekend, participants completed a Strength-Improvement-Insight (SII) reflection. Themes for strengths focused on teamwork and collaboration, entrepreneurial thinking, and creativity and problem solving. Themes for improvements focused on teamwork issues and the food provided. Themes for insights focused on the value and challenges of teamwork.