{"id":2265,"date":"2026-07-09T14:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T18:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/xcc\/?page_id=2265"},"modified":"2026-08-17T12:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T16:53:07","slug":"xcc-course-inspires-creativity-and-innovation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/xcc\/xcc-course-inspires-creativity-and-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"XCC Course Inspires Creativity and Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Concept<\/a><\/p>\n

Cross-College Challenge course Concept to Cart: Consumer Products Entrepreneurship<\/b>\u00a0challenges students from across BU to conceive, prototype, and pitch a real physical product over the course of a semester.\u00a0The spring 2026 cohort presented at the Experiential Learning Expo<\/a>, where teams made up of students with diverse majors unveiled products they built from scratch.<\/span><\/p>\n

The course is part of BU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship minor<\/a>, run by Innovate@BU and open to all undergraduates. It is co-taught by Questrom faculty Jules Pieri<\/a>, co-founder and former CEO of The Grommet, and Debi Kleiman<\/a>, former Executive Director of the Blank Center for Entrepreneurship at Babson College and author of First Pitch<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interdisciplinary Collaboration<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Teams in Concept to Cart are deliberately assembled across majors, and instructors say that’s what makes the projects work.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Honestly, the playing field feels pretty level for all the students, including the business majors,” says Pieri. “The range of student interests and academic backgrounds makes for far stronger projects, because developing a consumer product takes you into a wide range of areas, including being good at interviewing strangers, ideating product concepts, developing a distinctive brand, and prototyping product and packaging ideas.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The spring 2026 teams exemplified that range. Team ARCK<\/i>, made up of political science, international relations, and computer science students, designed HushMask, a sleep mask engineered to block noise across multiple frequency ranges, inspired by helicopter pilot headphones and aimed at college students sharing dorm rooms. Team Intent Cosmetics<\/i>, spanning international relations, chemistry, public relations, and political science majors, created The Loop, a silicone ring that attaches to a cosmetics bottle and uses an LED indicator to signal when a product has expired. Their research found that 98% of makeup users have used expired products and that 79% of used cosmetics test positive for bacteria.<\/span><\/p>\n

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