Support BU Student Entrepreneurship Project
3/23/2010

STOC members and friends have a unique opportunity to support an evolutionary design team from the undergraduate bioengineering department at SUNY Binghamton.

Student entrepreneurship design teams are presented with the challenge of developing intellectual property and implementing that idea in hopes of bettering a real world situation through the creation of a startup venture. Team Musenow is one of these design teams comprised of five senior bioengineering students .
Although financial gains for those involved are important, first and foremost the members of Musenow as engineers are focused on helping people in an effort to make meaning rather than the simply make money. The meaning that Musenow strives to make touches not only on the health of the local economy but the health of the individuals who comprise it.  Musenow through its development of innovative technologies is actively working to combat the issues associated with tough economic times.
Focusing on small business, team Musenow has two objectives.  The first objective is to improve the success of local businesses by increasing their access to larger customer bases.  Second, Musenow looks to create new jobs by encouraging dynamic collaborations between employers and currently skilled unemployed individuals.  The team has been working with Sean Harrigan, president and owner of three local Pack-N-Mail locations, and Cindy Johnson, owner of the handmade candy bouquet business Sweet Whimsies, as early adopters for their technology.
Expanding the reach of local businesses is accomplished by incorporating concepts of clustering and network mapping whereby an integrated database of local products can be displayed at a user's fingertips on a touch screen hub in the Vestal Pack-N-Mail location. Similarly, by collecting the unique skill sets of locally unemployed people, a spatial network can be constructed whereby closely related employers can connect with these people and employ them on a temporary or permanent basis.
The cooperation of small businesses and individuals is important to the project evaluation and launch. At no cost to the owner or individual, the students are looking to collect product and/or skill information.  This information will then be processed by Musenow's technology and made publicly available to anyone using either their physical hub or future web based service.
Musenow has already been featured on TV-34 and WBNG.  We encourage you to review the student website at http://musenow.net/.  If you wish to volunteer to post your product, service or personal information on the site, please contact student leader Kyle Hoellger at kylehoellger@gmail.com.

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