NAMPA, Idaho — The College of Western Idaho's Micron Education Center opened the college's Entrepreneurial Lab Thursday. The space may not look like your ordinary "lab" but will provide guidance, workshops, and a collaborative space.
- The lab is designed to turn ideas and dreams into market-ready products and services.
- The college created the lab to foster innovation and support entrepreneurship within the College and the broader community.
- I spoke with two students who are already planning on utilizing the space.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
A new resource is now available through the College of Western Idaho helping aspiring entrepreneurs, like Chelsea Klikunas.
"I was really lucky when I started my business, I had a lot of good resources. Here they offer workshops [and] I think you get a lot of really great resources from very established businesses that are free to the public," Klikunas said.
The lab, designed to turn ideas and dreams into market-ready products and services, will provide guidance, workshops, and a collaborative space. Students are already planning on taking advantage.
Welding student Grace Wontorcik told me, "I make sculptures for anybody who really asks for them. Right now it's not a huge thing."
I asked her, "How are you hoping that this entrepreneur lab can help you with that side hustle become maybe a little bit more than a side hustle?"
"There's a lot of nitty-gritty things that you have to do that I don't know about," she explained.
"And this [gestures to the metalwork] is your major, business isn't your major," I say.
"Business is not my major, yeah," she concedes, "and having someone able to explain the foundations to me patiently."
CWI's Nampa campus is growing alongside the city. Earlier this year, the community college broke ground on the first physical expansion at its main campus since 2007.
CWI's President Gordon Jones says, "To me, this is on-mission, it's going to support student learning, and frankly it may attract more students that want to be a part of this.
Chelsea, who previously owned a vintage clothing store in Boise, is continuing her education to help when she's ready to re-open.
"What's the thing you need to learn the most from this to get it back on the street?" I ask.
"Oh man, a lot," Chelsea says, "I think what I've gained so far is that experimenting isn't a bad thing and you can listen to all of the speakers but it's hard in entrepreneurship to know what works until you try."
