An Innovative Graduate Education Course - Lean Canvas for Invention

The Lean Canvas for Invention (LCI): A Team Based Framework for Research Development and Mentoring is a bold, new, and trasformative approach to STEM graduate education and training. In this project, we are piloting, testing, and validating the effectiveness and feasibility of the Lean Canvas for Invention framework, hosted within a course for research students within the College of Engineering at the University of Utah. This course is 1–3 credits, meant to be taken in the first year of a graduate student program. Content includes research development (including business-oriented evaluation of technology), career development, and mentor/network development. This paper describes our first year experience teaching the class twice, lessons learned, and plans for next year's developments.