I Need your Advice, Keep or Give?
Posted on 23 May 2007
I have a dilemma. Our senior project team has worked an entire year on creating Powercart (see video below for demo). We’ve spent over $600 on this project and are pretty proud of our creation.
The question now is:
Do we hand over this project to the school or do we keep it?
Giving the project to the school would mean giving up the physical cart and getting subsidized 50% of the money we’ve spent building it. Keeping it would mean we pay all $600 but keep ownership of the project.
What do you think we should do?
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May 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Easy. Give it to the school. You guys will throw it in your garage. Your legacy will last forever.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Keep it and run. You’ve already invested $600 in the thing, man.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:57 pm
THe purchasing person’s answer:
It depends on if you guys own the IP for it. If you do, then you have to decide if there’s any commercialization opportunity. THen, even if you guys don’t play to do anything about it, if anyone ever does in the soon to be future, then they’ll have to pay you guys some amount to use it :-)
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:25 pm
I fully agree with Allison’s comment, i. e. the key is whether you guys own the IP (Intellectual Property) for it or not.
May 24th, 2007 at 5:29 am
The question that should be asked is why do you guys want to keep it?
If the answer is for sentimental reasons, then I would lean towards giving it back to the school. You guys have videos to document your memories. Plus, I agree with Noah that it will probably end up in somebody’s garage.
If the answer is based on the nature of the technology, then it might be worth keeping. I don’t know how novel the technology is or if there is an actual application in mind for it in the future, but I’ve seen a lot of similar .creations for EE senior class projects in the past over the years. Unless you guys actually plan on starting a company based on this prototype, I don’t think it’s worth swallowing the $600.
Plus, since you guys cretaed it during a university class and probably spent time working on it on university property (i.e. classroom or lab), it is highly likely that the university will assume ownership of the patent should you decide to pursue it. In fact, if you choose to run with the technology, it may in fact be wiser to create a newer prototype independent of the university.
May 24th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I agree with Ken and his points.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I’m with Noah. Give it to school and let others drool over the project.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Thanks for all the feedback, super appreciate it! Still contemplating with the group…
May 24th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I think there may be a market. Have you ever thought about converting an engine lift? They’re a pain in the butt to move around!
May 27th, 2007 at 12:50 am
keep it!
$600 isn’t that much divided amongst the four of you…
think of it this way, down the line…
- you would probably highly regret somebody else coming up with the same idea and implementing it successfully (if you gave it away), = giving up a lot of money
- whereas you probably would not highly regret a ~$150 (assuming you guys split evenly) investment for that “just in case” scenario, = giving up not so much money.
May 28th, 2007 at 2:43 am
I think we just might keep it….