University of West Alabama

Helen McKinnon | Jr., Softball | Scholarship
Farmington, Minn. / Rosemount

Helen McKinnon earns her first Fleur-de-lis award of the academic year by participating in the innovation scholars program hosted by the Mayo Ventures Department. Over the last four months McKinnon and a team of three other students from St. Catherine University, including Sarah Wangen from the hockey team, were tasked with completing research for an innovation that was released to the Mayo Clinic Department. Her job in this project was to research the market and commercialization tactics of their product. She completed different types of analysis to predict what the financial impacts of releasing the innovation would be, the risks associated with releasing the product, and an operational plan to predict the timeline/cost of releasing the product to market. When the research was completed the team had to write a final paper to discuss everything they learned about the product and give a recommendation on whether they should continue on with this patented product. After the paper was submitted they had to prepare for our final presentation to share with Mayo Ventures, the team manager, and the innovator of the product.