From Classroom to Company My Journey Through the EIT Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor
By Christopher O’Hara
Purpose: This post explains how the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor in the EIT Digital Master School shaped my path as a system architect. Through three projects between 2018 and 2019 I learned how to pivot vision into MVP, align innovation with civic stakeholders, and turn a technical prototype into a product. Two of these projects became real companies and all three taught me lessons in connecting engineering with business and society.
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Introduction
The EIT Digital Master School integrates a technical major with a full minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This minor is not a side course but a structured path of projects that challenge students to act like entrepreneurs.
I entered via the IoT through Embedded Systems track as one of two selected worldwide. Over eighteen months the I and E minor took me through three projects in sequence
- LABELEDBY. (January to July 2018)
- Rennes Summer School (August 2018)
- Smart FC (October 2018 to March 2019)
Two of those projects LABELEDBY. and Smart FC eventually became real companies. This blog tells how each stage unfolded what I learned and why this experience shaped me as a system architect.
1 LABELEDBY. From Vision to MVP (January to July 2018)
The Innovation Space Project at TUe was my first opportunity in the I and E minor. Our goal was to conceive a high impact venture rooted in technology and sustainability.
The Idea and the Pivot
We began imagining smart garment factories that would automate production reduce waste and bring manufacturing back to local communities. The vision was bold but the challenge immense. As we talked to users and examined cost structures we realized the scale was unrealistic in our timeframe. The decision was made to pivot. Instead of factories we would focus on a single product customizable sustainable clutches.
Hardships and Challenges
Team dynamics were tough. Engineers designers and business students spoke different languages. At times I felt we were drifting without alignment. Pivoting the project meant letting go of our original dream which was psychologically difficult.
Crafting a viable product taught me that materials matter. Early prototypes failed in durability aesthetics and cost. Some combinations of leather fabrics 3D printed elements and finishes just did not work. We iterated many small prototypes and tested user acceptance.
Market skepticism was another barrier. The fashion space is crowded. We needed a narrative. We recruited ambassadors and influencers using their voice to elevate the product beyond aesthetics. Their feedback was blunt and useful.
Breakthrough and Outcome
Our market research showed a total addressable market of about 7.25 million women in the Netherlands. We carved out a serviceable obtainable market of about 220000 buyers in the mid high income bracket who valued sustainability and customization. Price as a clutch around 80 euros struck the balance between value and margin.
Over time LABELEDBY. became more than a class project. It attracted attention customer interest and progressed toward becoming a sustainable fashion tech startup active today. For me the lesson was clear a project that pivots intelligently is more viable than a perfect yet impractical vision.
2 Rennes Summer School Platforms for Smart Cities (August 2018)
Next I joined the EIT Digital Summer School in Rennes. The focus was digital platforms for smart cities. Unlike LABELEDBY. this project was not about a tangible product but designing innovation in a civic ecosystem.
The Experience
My team was multinational and multidisciplinary. We had to work quickly to propose a platform for urban mobility that integrated IoT data analytics and municipal systems. We balanced technical design with user need and city constraints.
Hardships and Constraints
Cities operate under policy governance and regulation. Every idea faced questions about privacy data sharing infrastructure compatibility and standards. Our technical proposals often clashed with municipal realities.
Team communication was another friction point. Sometimes engineers would push features that business or design team deemed unfeasible. We had to learn to converge on shared language and purpose.
Time pressure was real. We had two weeks only to ideate prototype validate and pitch to a jury of industry and municipal stakeholders. We worked late nights rewriting models rethinking trajectories and aligning with public authorities.
Breakthrough and Learning
We shifted our framing. Instead of trying to solve mobility directly we proposed a platform orchestration model modular layers for crowdsourced data integration service APIs and incremental adoption. This allowed cities to adopt parts without replacing existing systems wholesale.
What stood out was that innovation in civic context demands not just tech but negotiation compromise stakeholder alignment. The project was never meant to launch a company. Its value lay in teaching that architecture must consider governance law public interest and technical feasibility in tandem.
AlphaLink Smart FC From Prototype to Productization (October 2018 to March 2019)
The final phase of the minor was the Innovation and Entrepreneurship thesis with Project AlphaLink. The subject was drones and flight control. The challenge was that tuning flight controllers across UAV platforms is slow, error prone, and inconsistent. This is particularly problematic for small labs and startups without the resources of large companies. Our project investigated how an integrated environment could lower this barrier by combining simulation, autotuning, and commercialization strategies.
The Concept
Smart FC was envisioned as an environment to support automatic tuning of UAV controllers. It integrated simulation of complex behaviors, validation workflows, and visualization of responses. The objective was to provide a tool that small UAV developers and labs could adopt without the overhead of building custom infrastructures. My own contribution centered on creating digital twin simulations of UAV dynamics and control. These models provided the testing ground for demonstrating how tuning processes could be automated and validated.
Hardships and Tradeoffs
The team had to make strategic choices. One question was whether to implement the solution as a desktop tool or as a cloud service. Desktop favored latency, IP control, and offline use, which are critical for defense and sensitive research. Cloud favored collaboration and scalability but introduced risks around security and code exposure.
Intellectual property was another difficulty. Many UAV control libraries are open source and governed by licenses like GPL. We addressed this by modularizing the architecture so that proprietary modules could be isolated and avoid license contamination.
The user interface was also debated. Engineers require power but resist complexity. Research showed that deep menu layers discourage adoption. We therefore emphasized a shallow interface with single click autotuning and clear visual feedback.
Pricing models were equally challenging. We studied existing approaches such as MathWorks toolboxes, subscription models, and modular licensing. Each implied different adoption patterns. Small labs tended to prefer one time licensing, while larger institutions favored recurring models that included updates and support.
Customer discovery was slow. Larger drone companies were already tied to established toolchains. Smaller labs had limited funds. Repeated outreach was needed to identify early adopters who could validate the concept.
Breakthrough and Outcome
The thesis provided more than a prototype. It offered a structured value analysis of how Smart FC could succeed in a competitive market. The digital twin simulations demonstrated feasibility. The business model work clarified licensing and pricing options. Together, this supported the transition from a thesis project into a standalone venture.
The lesson was that productization is as much about architecture as algorithm design. A working system must consider interface design, licensing structures, IP protection, and customer adoption strategies alongside technical performance. This experience underscored that system architecture spans both the technical stack and the business ecosystem.
Integration and Reflection
These three projects form a coherent learning arc that reshaped how I approach systems and architecture. LABELEDBY. forced me to test assumptions in a saturated market, pivot away from an impractical vision, and validate with a real product and real customers. The Rennes summer school showed me that innovation in civic domains requires balancing technical feasibility with regulation, governance, and stakeholder alignment. Smart FC demonstrated that technical prototypes must be embedded within value analysis, licensing strategies, and simulation validation before they can become products.
My contributions across these stages reflect this progression. In LABELEDBY. I learned the discipline of scaling scope without losing ambition. In Rennes I experienced the challenges of aligning technical ideas with nontechnical actors. In Smart FC I applied digital twin simulations to validate UAV control behavior while supporting the broader analysis of market and licensing models.
As a system architect these lessons reinforced that architecture cannot be limited to interfaces and modules. It must encompass the contexts in which systems operate: markets, regulations, user adoption, and business sustainability. The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor demonstrated this principle by requiring both technical rigor and entrepreneurial reasoning, creating outcomes that extended beyond coursework into ventures and professional practice.
Conclusion and Future
The EIT Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor was not a side path. It was the crucible in which technology business and society converged in practice.
Two projects LABELEDBY. and Smart FC became companies. One was a civic innovation platform. Each stage challenged me in new ways.
For engineers and architects reading this the lesson is that building systems is only half the task. You must build the environment in which systems succeed. The I and E minor gave me the tools the humility and the perspective to do that.
Additional Interview
As I pursued my Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PdEng) and grew into leadership and systems design roles I remained committed to integrating technical depth and entrepreneurship. To read more about that stage see Chris O’Hara From the US to the EU – EIT Digital Alumni