Happy summer! We hope that everybody is enjoying their time and taking advantage of the sunshine. Summertime is for trying new things and going on adventures, and that is exactly what we have been doing! We are the 2022 Summer Fellows here at 100K Ideas and wanted to share a little about our experience and the new things that we have learned. Our names are Ella and Tariq, and we both attend Michigan State University. We did an eight week fellowship to learn about 100K Ideas, entrepreneurship, Flint, as well as expand our knowledge on our intended career paths. Here are a few things we’ve experienced and learned from during this program:
Working in Flint
Despite living in or near Flint, neither of us had experienced most of it until working with 100K Ideas. During these past weeks, we have explored downtown Flint as much as we could and have spoken to many small business owners in the area, which we will talk about further in the next section. We have gone to restaurants, shops, and companies, while learning so much more about Flint as a whole. With this newfound knowledge came more passions to take what we have learned from Flint, using that information to help benefit our own towns and support Flint as much as we can.
Guest Speakers/Questions
Speaking to the business owners also gave us the opportunity to learn more about their individual entrepreneurship processes. We had the opportunity to speak with a multitude of them,from all different professions, and ask as many questions as we wanted. Each speaker had their own valuable insights on problem solving, creativity, expression, and leadership. It was especially valuable to compare and contrast their ideas, bringing up points that one speaker raised to another, and hearing what they responded with. A particularly interesting interaction came on the topic of problem solving, where one speaker preferred a methodical listing of relevant information, and a later one found it easier to brute force their current understanding into the problem then correct themselves later. The ability to bring the first idea to the second speaker and get a distinct answer actually gave us a new tool for solving problems that we may have never considered before.
Merchandise Project
Part of our fellowship was to create a new merchandise product for 100K Ideas to be sold. This task was a new experience for both of us and was challenging, but so rewarding. We put a lot of research into our chosen product and designed it exactly to the way we had imagined it. We created three different laptop decal stickers that represent 100k ideas’ goals. We are very proud of our designs and can’t wait for them to be on the market!
Overall, during the 8 weeks we have been here, we have done, learned, and experienced so many different things. We have spoken to many guest speakers and local business owners to learn more about their stories and how they became entrepreneurs. We have gone out and explored Flint and learned so much about the history and growth that has been occurring. We have also made a binder with a business plan for our own ideas in order to learn more about the process and all of the analytics that go into this.
Both of us have learned so much and have expanded our minds and thinking processes a lot throughout our time here. We are so thankful for this experience and are looking forward to the future. All of our new knowledge will transfer not only to our professional lives, but also our classes at school, and our own personal lives as well. As we will both be returning to Michigan State in the fall, we feel much more confident and experienced which will transfer into our studies and future careers.
