Lessons.
Every project tells a story. But behind the scenes, Fretz was tracking what really mattered — how students think, fail, pivot, and lead.
These are the patterns, observations, and truths from a thousand teams.
Call it a curriculum. Call it chaos. Either way, it worked
What Makes a Great Team?
After mentoring over 1,000 student teams, Dr. Fretz noticed what made the best ones thrive.
1. Leadership
“They have a strong leader, with vision. Sometimes, but not always, this leader will bring an existing idea to the table, but they can also just endorse someone else’s idea. The key is that they feel and own the project, and share that energy.”
2. Engineering
“Have an Engineer on team. It’s not a guarantee, but it was anecdotally the one most noticeable demographic factor. The highest ranked team of all time, Laser Toaster, was all Engineers. The second highest had none.”
3. Team Makeup
“Team is made up of diverse backgrounds and skills, and those have a bearing on the project. Partly luck, but also good, intentional team formation, gathering the resources the project will need. (marketing, tech savvy, etc)“
4. Team EQ
“They show Joy and provide psychological safety. This became more common once I instituted the use of the team bonding acceleration exercise. Without exception, all the worst and problem teams admitted they skipped that exercise.”
5. The Magic
“They have the magic when it comes to ideation. I wish I knew what it was. If I could go back in time, we could do a killer research project, gathering demographics and longitudinal data on those 1-3 teams EVERY semester who just came in with a rockstar list of incredible, launchable ideas. Most teams struggle a bit but come up with ONE. What made those teams so prolific….?”
What Guarantees Failure?
Every misstep you’re about to read? Fretz has seen it. And yes, these are his words.
01
Lethargy
“When the team is composed of all super passive personalities, and no one ever really leads. This is common for the leftover teams that form from individuals who slacked during team formation and let the process pass them by. They spend a lot of time sighing about how hard everything is.”
02
Dispassionate
“They have no passion/are in the class for the wrong reason (heard it was “fun” or “easy”). They tend to develop weak project ideas that barely meet standard and then proceed to do them very poorly. Like the ‘grandma knits a can coozie’ team, where all they did with their idea is have one of their gramma’s crochet ONE coozie, and they showed it as their final project. No sales, no production, nothing. The class started laughing, and I realized I had to develop the Phase system to scaffold their progress.”
03
Overfriendly
“They are groups of friends who can’t hold each other accountable. 5 frat brothers, or 4 female athlete’s on the same team or whatever. They go for weeks convincing each other there is plenty of time and no one ever raising the alarm until, generally, it is too late. (see the ‘letter from a failed team’ in the project guide.)”
04
Unremarkable
“They have the opposite of ‘magic‘ (and the implied failure of the education system). Sometimes students have shockingly over-inflated ideas of their work, and what real work and success is. Example, the team whose final project was to buy a kiddie pool at the store, and three bags of Halloween candy, and wrap those candies with printed out random facts various diseases, and have people in a common area use ‘fishing rods’ (sticks with string and sticky ends) to ‘fish’ out the candy. This was supposed to increase awareness of the various diseases? The entire project could be completed in four hours by two 10 year olds and $50. AND they wanted to have a huge argument when I suggested that perhaps four people working 3-5 hours a week for three months might have done something a tad more substantial.”
What His Students taught Him.
1) Ideation under pressure is possible (but not the best way). Giving students a short pressure period to ideate is contrary to research, but required by the class realities. I worried that this would be a huge problem, but honestly it never was. When the students are bright enough, they almost always come up with something, and often something really great.
2) IQ matters. Having done versions of this elsewhere, and speaking to other professors, making the creative insight under pressure is tied to both intelligence and life experience. I think anyone can have a creative insight, but in terms of volume of good ideas, IQ helps.
3) Experience is a fence, expand your fences. Something like 40% of the ideas I hear every term are related to studying or socializing, which makes sense in terms of student expertise and awareness of pain points. This resulted in a “banned list” in the project guide after 2-3 teams had done the same thing and all died at the same obstacle.
4) You can’t run out of ideas, there is always another. Early on I actually briefly wondered if at some point we would hit a wall, but of course, that’s not how creativity works. EVERY TERM there were multiple ideas that just delighted with their cleverness and potential.
5) Young novices are utterly clueless about what idea is good, but BRILLIANT at generating ideas! The magic in the course came from the divergent/convergent push and pull of winnowing their ideas to find the one that fit the needs/constraints of the class PLUS fit the skills and resources of the team (see the “problem list” in the project guide)
6) My students, and I think youth in general, are wildly over-confident about marketing and social media. They assume posting on their Insta will bring thousands of viral engagements and overwhelmingly the final project reports bemoaned how hard marketing really is. They learn quickly why Dr. Fretz says “you can’t pay the IRS with likes and follows!”
7) Setting a high bar and pushing relentlessly is key to keeping engagement high and replicating real ENTR vibes. If you get that right, it really resonates with the students.
8) Funding is a choke point, but creativity helps here too! We used all the campus resources, but I also started just giving funds to teams that I felt deserved a shot to see their idea bloom. However, they also did great work “finding a way” to do it cheap and still be able to pay rent. For example the team hosting a cookout that “raided” the dorm dining hall for takeout ingredients, and made grilled sandwiches and pizzas over the fire.
9) Scaffolding matters. In the “zone of proximal development” they CAN complete a full ideation to prototype process, but they need help, specifically titrated by group. So the project guide, the GSI mini lectures, GSI coaching, Dr. Fretz mentoring, and the phase documents all combine to support their success
10) Team dynamics matters. A huge emphasis in the course, and if it’s bad, the team ALWAYS struggles. We had about one team a year that had to be ‘broken up’ due to unsolvable interpersonal dynamics. About 80% of the teams that struggled could be saved though, with coaching and some “tough love”.
11) Transition/fledgling support is vital for serious teams. Taking them from no egg, make an egg, hatch the egg, fledge the bird, try to fly in 90 days is a fun process. But without follow on support, the teams almost always just “let it drop” once the term is done, because it seems too daunting to continue on without the supports. So the best teams got to meet new resources and mentors at the Big Show, which was instrumental in increasing the long term success of any number of teams.