SBIR Phase I: Online curriculum for creating purpose-driven Start-ups

This SBIR Phase I project takes a deeper look at the concept of 'purpose' and its relationship to the marketplace, unemployment, and start-up incubators. It intends to develop a multi-question self-assessment tool to help individuals find meaningful purpose through free, online, live and self-paced hybrid course instruction. The coursework will use augmented reality and 3-D video to motivate individuals to re-think purpose as a central motivation to employment and entrepreneurship. This project aligns with the NSF?s mission to advance national health, prosperity, and welfare with science and technology. These outcomes could potentially generate a new generation of business owners that are dedicated to meaning and money through a double bottom-line approach to entrepreneurship. This project combines the educational work of finding purpose through self- help and the technology of 3-D video and augmented reality for the first time. This unique project provides free online live synchronous education combined with hybrid self-paced online course work to help individuals find meaningful self-employment solutions. This project utilizes a proprietary training method designed to quickly help individuals find their purpose in life and invent a useful business or nonprofit to solve problems in the world. This research can help students re-center their motivations to chart a meaningful life course through a business or nonprofit start-up. The curriculum starts with this activity and extends to provide students an opportunity to enter the marketplace through micro-enterprise or nonprofit creation. The courses will utilize predictive analytics to synthesize student data (such as the answers each student inputs for the four questions in the purpose activity). The data will be reorganized and automated into a clear and targeted purpose proposition statement for the student. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.