UTK marketing students, startup founders partner for hands-on Innovation Crossroads collaboration
Now in its second year, the collaborative initiative pairs senior marketing students with deep-tech founders to deliver the real-world campaign assets and business best practices needed to help these young companies scale.
On Tuesday evening, business leaders, innovators and students gathered for a special edition of Innovation Crossroads. All semester long, a handful of Innovation Crossroads founders were paired with senior marketing students in the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business Marketing Department.
The concept is straightforward but high-impact. Students get hands-on experience developing an integrated marketing campaign for highly technical, real companies that these students can use as a portfolio project as they enter the workforce.
The founders receive market-ready assets that are critically needed at the startup stage, along with business fundamentals that many technically trained entrepreneurs have not had the opportunity to develop.
The program’s faculty sees this partnership as a direct response to where higher education needs to go.
“We’ve got 55 students enrolled in this course. We are so excited about the talent that is coming out of the university. We’re doing everything that we can to continue to innovate. I think the demands that AI is putting upon us as educators require us to reimagine and re-envision not only the hard and technical skills that our students are graduating with, but the soft and professional skills that our students need as well,” said Christine White, assistant professor of practice and director of Partnerships and Growth Initiatives.
The participating startups
- AluminAiry, founded by Brian Washington, develops aluminum-powered energy storage solutions designed to improve off-grid power.
- Elemental Composites, founded by Vinit Chaudhary, develops non-woven, natural composite materials as a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to traditional synthetic fibers.
- Effusio, co-founded by Viktor Zenkov, builds advanced cooling solutions for AI data centers.
- Fibarcode, founded by Brian Iezzi, develops an alternative to traditional labels that enables faster, more effective post-sale clothing tracking.
- AtomQ, founded by Kevin Roccapriore, builds quantum materials and chips atom-by-atom using advanced electron microscopy.
- Algenovas, founded by Helen Banner, develops algae-based, formaldehyde-free building materials to reduce health risks.
- Witching Hour, founded by Lance Adler, builds solutions to eliminate forest fire risk for electric utilities.
What the students delivered
At the beginning of the semester, founders share a current wishlist of marketing needs. But students aren’t limited to that ask alone. The students are encouraged to think three months to three years ahead as part of a truly integrated marketing campaign that can scale for moments to come.
For all companies, students delivered comprehensive, integrated marketing campaigns. Every team produced a problem-and-solution analysis, target audience research, detailed buyer personas, rebrand and website mockups, social media strategies with content ideas, trade show booth mockups and attendance recommendations, email campaigns, and PR event plans.
“I think this class really means putting the four years that we’ve spent in the marketing program into practice instead of dealing with hypotheticals. It gives us an opportunity to actually implement it like real work,” said Garrett Edwards, a participating student.
At the end of the semester, each innovator receives a full suite of everything the students created, including drafts, finals, and even AI code prompts, so that they are set up to implement the plans immediately.
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