Students who have great business ideas but no clue how to bring them to fruition now have a place to start.

The Office of Vice President for Research at Texas Tech University launched a new student organization focused on providing innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students across all academic colleges and disciplines. The Texas Tech Innovation Mentorship and Entrepreneurship (TTIME) organization was created to foster a culture where ideas meet the marketplace.

Saba Nafees, graudate student from Fort Worth and president of TTIME, recently hosted an event to inform students about TTIME’s mission.

“This is really, truly a new era for Texas Tech history,” Nafess said. “We’ve had other ventures but not something like this, a student group that’ll get together and really give wings to new concepts they’ve been thinking about.”

The event also was attended by President M. Duane Nellis, Vice President for Research Robert Duncan, and Dean of the Rawls College of Business School Lance Nail.

Vice President for Research Robert Duncan.

“We had feedback from 6,000 students and over 80 percent of them said they wanted more entrepreneurship,” Nellis said. “TTIME is certainly a reflection of that.” Nellis said through TTIME, he hopes to build upon three pillars to help move Texas Tech forward as a 21st-century land-grant university.

“One relates to being more entrepreneurial, but we also want to be more engaged inside and outside the classroom with our alumni, business leaders, the state and beyond,” he said. “We also want to be more interdisciplinary. So, many of TTIME’s initiatives will come from business students, science students, communication students and beyond.”

Nail also expressed his expectations for TTIME.

“Let’s put TTIME into context. You have a circle of innovation and a circle that’s entrepreneurship,” Nail said. “Where those two intersect, you’re going to have commercial enterprises, and that’s where your job creation, economic growth and economic prosperity comes from. That’s what national research universities do.”

TTIME was created under the direction of Duncan when he realized faculty and students who come up with some of the most entrepreneurial inventions have no way of coming together.

Saba Nafees

“We want to get everybody together to really create those sorts of teams for our students,” Duncan said. “We want these relationships to start to form under TTIME.”

The organization provides events to help connect students with faculty and also offers educational seminars on how to start a business and bring inventions into the marketplace. TTIME also plans to host a three-day startup workshop every semester to help students and faculty collaborate.

Nafees hopes to help students jump-start their own companies by providing them with the necessary resources and catalysts.

“I want this to be a hub where many different types of students get together and share their ideas,” Nafees said. “I want to see their dream come true, right here, through TTIME.”

For more information on how to get involved, contact TTIME sponsor Jennifer Horn at jennifer.horn@ttu.edu, or like and join the TTIME Facebook page.