Enabling Student Innovation By Leveraging Lessons From Industry

Now that Engineering Entrepreneurship (E2) programs are emerging in universities all over the world, the E2 Community’s focus can be shifted from why teach E2 to what should we teach and how should we teach it? Current programs teem with courses on business models, marketing, accounting, etc. In some ways they resemble mini-MBA’s, designed to bootstrap engineers and scientists up the knowledge level necessary to take their product from concept to market. The underlying assumption to building all these skills is that the students have an innovative product to bring to market. Few engineering curriculums teach students to innovate. There is a continuum from science to business. Entrepreneurship programs focus on the business cycles over the technology cycles, assuming students understand the development of technology from their own domain experience.