How it Works

• Application

  The application process is simple. There are only a few questions, including your name and email address. We want to get to know you, your team, and your idea.

  Apply Now

  Apply Now
• Selection day

  A team of thought leaders in advancement, technology, entrepreneurship, etc. serve one-year terms on a Selection Committee, charged with identifying the initiatives for the batches and for helping to frame the direction for the batches (identifying preferred verticals or horizontals).

  Learn more about the Selection Committee

  Learn more about the Selection Committee
• Kickoff

  Kickoff is the first meeting of the teams in a batch. It’s the first time the teams pitch their ideas, and a time to build community and refine the scope of their projects.

• Batch Work

  Accepted teams have 12 weeks to investigate, design, or pilot their initiative during the batch, with advising from the Strategic Innovation team, Selection Committee, and other external advisors. Batch participants come together once every week for team meetings, checkpoints, all-ins, and feedback sessions. 

  During each batch, the teams will focus on two types of work—Innovation work and Pitch work. Innovation work is the actual design or pilot work to launch your new idea, including budgets, timelines, growth plans, market research, marketing strategies, prototypes, toolkits, etc. Pitch work is the work to help convince a Demo Day audience and the Selection Committee to green light your idea, including storytelling, evidence building, practice pitches, gathering feedback, etc.

  Investigate

  Teams may develop a preliminary business case or overview of the initiative, the analysis segment to investigate determined, and preliminary analysis performed, quantifying the market/potential and identifying leading stories. 

  Attempts may also be made during this stage to assess data maintenance/integration opportunities for the advancement enterprise and to document data entry standards or system functional needs, if applicable.

  Design

  Teams will focus their energy on deeper investigation and the refinement of preliminary intelligence into strategies, tactics, programs, and/or technologies to address that issue or opportunity.

  The result should be either movement into the Pilot stage in a subsequent batch or failure to develop a viable strategy, product, program, or process.

  Pilot

  Teams launch an initial proof of concept for a subset of the UIDP, adjusting and planning for scalability across enterprise or industry.

  The result should be either scaling into normal business practices or failure of pilot. In rare cases with successful pilots, the Selection Committee may opt to retain an initiative in UIDEA during its first Scaling instance.

• Demo Day

  Demo Day is the culminating event of each 12-week batch, where the teams pitch their ideas to an audience of advancement colleagues, university partners, advisors, and guests to see if their idea should be funded in its next stage.

• Due Diligence

  The work after the work. Due diligence is when teams finalize their product or plans and document answers to the myriad frequently asked questions audiences and the Selection Committee might have.

• Decision Day

  Within a month after Demo Day, teams hear whether the Selection Committee opted to fund their ideas for the upcoming fiscal year.