Out at the Library Courtyard on Oct. 22, the Office of Innovation (OOI) hosted its annual Startup Competition Kickoff Event. Complete with snack tables, a board presenting last year’s competition finalists and comfortable chairs for guest panelists arranged beneath a big banner celebrating the kickoff, the OOI was ready to launch another year of student innovations — including a special, exciting debut of the new ProtoDesign Lab.

THE KICKOFF AND PANEL

Located on the first floor of Biola’s library, the OOI is a space to help students launch their entrepreneurial dreams in whatever shape or form.

“We want to help get them started … For example, right now, we have some guys who are working on a T-shirt company,” said Asha Joseph, a freshman English major and copywriter for the OOI. “We just really want to help students get their dreams off the ground, whatever that looks like in an entrepreneurial sense, or just when they have ideas and they don’t know where to go with them. We want to help them build something from it.”

The OOI is a relatively recent organization, having started five years ago — and each year, it has consistently hosted the Startup Competition and Kickoff event.

This year’s kickoff featured four panelists from a variety of entrepreneurial backgrounds: Gaby and Danielle Mathews from The Lab, Inc.; Darius Fong from Run Tech Club; and Grant Lawrence, co-founder of the Thank God clothing brand and a Biola alumnus. Together with Sena Lee, founder of MILLU and the panel’s moderator, the panelists shared their journey into entrepreneurship.

The panel covered topics such as “radical collaboration,” creating a new culture through their startup companies, discerning God’s will for their lives, persevering in all aspects of entrepreneurship and how to weave their faith and their businesses together. Students also had the opportunity to ask the panelists one question.

ANNOUNCING THE PROTODESIGN LAB

This year, the OOI also planned a scavenger hunt game to commence the launch of the brand new ProtoDesign Lab. This new lab provides space for people to create all sorts of things, like button-making, T-shirt prints, stickers and 3D-printing.

The ProtoDesign Lab contains many of the features the Biola Makerspace formerly had prior to its closure at the beginning of Spring 2024. The lab now operates in multiple locations, each hosting a specific set of tools led by OOI student workers from various majors. The lab space in the library contains Cricut and sewing machines, while all the 3D-printing machinery lives within the Crowell Business Building. The lab also partners with the AI Venture Studio and AI Lab in Crowell to have AI assist in the 3D-printing process.

“We partner with [the AI Lab] because of the new [business] dean Michael Arena and his visionary look at AI and making sure that students do have access to AI,” said Silvia Mah, director of OOI and a professor in the Crowell School of Business.

Mah hopes that the ProtoDesign Lab will continue to provide a creative and innovative space for all students across campus.

“As Director of Innovation at the Office of Innovation, our vision and mission is to be able to have equal access to all students across campus to innovation and creativity,” Mah said. “So that means that we are in the library as a co-working space, and we want to make sure that we have 3D printers, and we have sewing machines, and we have all these things available to any student on campus. I will take any closet, any open space possible, to make that a priority. Students are our priority. They’re coming first in anything that we do.”

As a member of the OOI team, Joseph is also eager for students to get involved in creative and entrepreneurial ventures at Biola and beyond — especially as believers in Christ preparing for a career in a largely secular world.

“I think of when the Lord said, ‘On earth as it is in heaven. Your kingdom come, your will be done.’ And I really feel like when Christians engage in the business and secular world, we have the chance to bring the kingdom here on earth,” Joseph said. “We get to bring the kindness of Jesus that we’ve experienced, and we get to bring an honesty to the business world that can sometimes be neglected. … If we can come in with an air of humility, [with] just how radical that is in the business world, I think that’s gonna be such a cool thing. … We have such an opportunity to shift the atmosphere of the places we’re in.”