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Teaching Entrepreneurship to Engineering Students
January 12-16, 2003 - Monterey, Ca, USA
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Eleanor Baum, Cooper Union, USA
Carl McHargue, University of Tennessee, USA |
The articles for these proceedings are not peer-reviewed.
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Moving Students with Entrepreneurial Mindsets to Being Technology Entrepreneurs
Elizabeth C. Kisenwether, Pennsylvania State University
ABSTRACT:
There is general agreement that entrepreneurial thinking and attitudes can be
learned and fostered. But how do colleges and universities really prepare students
for the challenges of being a bootstrap startup entrepreneur, or being a product
innovator in an existing company? Guiding this shift from entrepreneurial
thinking-to-doing is the ultimate value of any entrepreneurship program. This
presentation summarizes Penn State’s approach to moving entrepreneurial minds
from the classroom to the business world in an Engineering Entrepreneurship
Minor.
First, sophomore and junior year students interested in technology
entrepreneurship are actively recruited from the colleges of business, engineering
and school of IST (Information Sciences and Technology). Cross-university
participation ensures diverse project teams. Within the Minor, a 'cross-skills' core
course is required: engineering and IST students take a 'business basics' course, and
business students take an 'engineering basics' course. This course establishes
students’ expertise and confidence in doing work outside their major, and
appreciation of their team members’ skills. Students also work on a minimum of
three product/process design teams, repeatedly executing the idea-to-product
viability evaluation including marketing and finance analysis, and product
prototyping. Students see the value of solid team communications, creative problemsolving,
and tough evaluation of their solutions by non-academic judges. During the
senior year, students work on Stage I teams, either doing “starter-technology”
business assessment and product prototyping for a Penn State technology
researcher, or working with a local high-tech company in a new product
development and launch. Stage II projects are challenging out-of-comfort-zone
experiences for the students, with fixed deadlines, firm deliverables, intellectual
property issues, and tough go-no go decisions.
Expected enrollment in the new Engineering Entrepreneurship (E-SHIP) Minor is
150 students per year by 2004. The E-SHIP Minor is a collaborative effort of the
College of Engineering, Smeal College of Business Administration, and the School of
IST, with generous support from the GE Learning Excellence Fund and the NCIIA.
Elizabeth C. Kisenwether, "Moving Students with Entrepreneurial Mindsets to Being Technology Entrepreneurs" in "Teaching Entrepreneurship to Engineering Students", Eleanor Baum and Carl McHargue
Eds, ECI
Symposium Series, Volume P2 (2003). http://services.bepress.com/eci/teaching/18
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