Presentations
iTeams presentations are not for pitch practice; they are made to audiences ready to give feedback.
- “Being Wrong” Presentation: This is your first opportunity as a team to explore the readiness (or lack thereof) of the technology or problem with which you are working. Audience: peers and one guest.
- Mid-Term Evaluation: 2-minute PowerPoint overview backed by evidence of three distinct opportunities for your project, followed by interaction with guests. Audience: select group of iTeams “friends” (e.g., innovators, VCs, entrepreneurs, alumni, and domain experts).
- Mingling Event Presentation/Middle School Presentation: Two-minute PowerPoint overview of your final report, followed by one-on-one discussions with guests. Presentations ought to include three distinct opportunities and clear steps to reduce uncertainty. This is the last opportunity to gather information about the space of opportunity from people in the audience.
Contrary to what most seem to assume, you’re not luring investors every time you explain a project. If your project is truly worth your time, the so-called “elevator pitch” will be the rarest of the presentations you’ll do. If you prepare to describe your concept genuinely through storytelling, and you assume your audience’s questions will not just be motivated by gauging a potential investment, you’ll succeed at presenting every time. Even investors will be compelled to ask questions that are better for you. That’s what our daring 2020 students got to practice while inspiring nearly 300 middle schoolers. It was so wildly successful, we did it again in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
- Final One-on-One Presentation: A 30-minute overview of project outcomes and your recommendation in a discussion with the course faculty and up to two select guests.
Assignments and Practice Sheets
Assignments and practice sheets are designed for you to practice skills and make progress with your project. Specific assignment instructions will be shared after team formation.
Final Deliverables
- Final Technology-Problem Whitepaper and Scale Up Report: A five-to-ten-page written report that establishes the connection between a problem and a set of technologies and signals a robust space of opportunity. The report must include how the technology you chose to work on may help seize that space, and a recommendation for immediate next steps and medium/long-term milestones. These deliverables will be given to the course faculty and PI, and to MIT’s Technology Licensing Office when appropriate. The report should document the following:
- Three distinct opportunities that may be seized with adequate evolution of technology and market understanding, described by their attractiveness, organizational model, and structure.
- An outline for a “build-to-kill-plan,” including a map of decisions/uncertainties that chart options to evolve your project to several distinct and impactful destinations.
- Considerations about the organizational model suited to act on your next steps, including (among others) funding, research and development, and organizational elements.
- Final Short Presentation/Mingling Event: A two-minute presentation with Q&A to a full middle school student body. Spread STEM, Spread Impact. Guidelines for Presentation to Middle School
- Final One-on-One Presentation: A 30-minute overview of project outcomes and your recommendation in a discussion with the course faculty and up to two select guests.
It is entirely acceptable for your team to come to a well-researched conclusion that no avenue to impact for the technology exists.
