Make Impact Consortium

The Make Impact Consortium is for universities, companies and public agencies who understand that technology innovation is first and foremost about people, and value the importance of joining a like-minded community for mutual learning and benefit.

For centuries, makers have made great entrepreneurs, inventors, and industry leaders. Making and entrepreneurship in the 21st century taps into these timeless activities. Just as computers have shrunk from room size to fit into our pockets, we can now have maker machines on our desks that previously were only found on factory floors. This made a difference because it allowed entrepreneurs to convert ideas into technological innovations. This marriage of making and entrepreneurship is in part what sparked the current maker revolution.

Making and entrepreneurship are more about culture and people than about facilities and equipment. On college campuses, many students are driven to develop their entrepreneurial skills and explore their creative ideas. Students from myriad backgrounds and interests are flocking to makerspaces to learn skills, meet other like-minded students, build things for classes and research projects, and explore new product ideas. Students become good at creating things for any reason. They make impact if these reasons address real needs.

Makerspaces support the current trend in education of learning by doing. They provide students with resources to create rapid prototypes and multiple iterations, and encourage them to innovate by networking with others and forming teams within their community. Makerspaces are an important ingredient to the strong entrepreneurial ecosystem that students are looking for and future employers value. Universities recognize the value of enhancing their entrepreneurship programing, maker facilities and culture for the benefit of students, faculty, alumni, employers and the larger community and economy. This can extend beyond the university -- impacting technology innovation ecosystems in cities and regions around the globe.

The mission is to provide tangible resources that speed integration of technology, innovation, making and entrepreneurship within universities and the technology innovation ecosystems that surround them. We work with our members to define, and practice, better ways to Make Impact.

VISION -- The vision is to build a global consortium that defines the needs, and creates the resources, to build university-wide, and regional environments that attract, educate, support, employ and deploy the next generation of innovative and entrepreneurial makers. We are creating a new paradigm for the smart deployment and use of resources in technology innovation ecosystems.

VALUES -- We believe these values are central to developing university ecosystems, and regional ecosystems, wherein students convert passion and classroom learning into world-changing ideas:
(*) the marriage of making and entrepreneurship skills has a key role in skill development and the perspective needed to solve real problems and seed entrepreneurial activities
(*) technology innovation ecosystems thrive when they have “making literate” entrepreneurs and “entrepreneurial literate” makers
(*) universities have an indispensable role in creating and feeding city/state/regional technology innovation ecosystems
(*) university networks can speed impact by sharing maker/entrepreneurship best practices and programming• ongoing assessment and improvement of makerspaces leads to more impactful making and entrepreneurship programs

COMMUNITY -- At its heart, technological innovation is about people and opportunity -- people learning together, creating together, and collaborating together to provide solutions where opportunities exist -- in short, a community that supports its members to dream, invent, innovate and make impact. A community that forces the fusion of technology, innovation, making, and entrepreneurship. The Make Impact Consortium is an extended community of like-minded individuals and institutions, dedicated to facilitating connections so that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.We would not be where we are today without our network of friends and collaborators: