A Holistic Approach To Teaching Engineering Entrepreneurship And Technology Commercialization

With their creative product and technology ideas, engineers are excellent sources of high growthpotential entrepreneurial and technology commercialization ventures. However, this resource has not been effectively supported by academia in general, to fully realize its potential. This paper reviews contemporary literature on teaching of entrepreneurship and describes an innovative, holistic inter-disciplinary Engineering Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization approach backed by the resources and activities of a technology incubator, to provide engineering students and researchers with tools and opportunities for entrepreneurial success, establish deeper and more meaningful community ties, and facilitate the incubation of investable technology-based start-ups. Packaging the “incubator concept” into a series of graduate, undergraduate and continuing education short courses is a unique feature of this program, which offers practical insights, tools, objectives, case studies, strategies, mock negotiations and actions that one can apply to any stage of an entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial venture from initial idea to growth and profitability. The ever-pressing issue of funding is presented as a manageable hurdle and options to structure and develop the business to attract potential investors are presented. The critical roles of engineering, marketing, finance and management are clearly explained as the entrepreneur learns practical and leading-edge approaches to bring products to market and grow the organization. Technology commercialization projects, guest lectures and interaction / networking opportunities with successful or struggling technical entrepreneurs, corporate intrapreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, corporate technology managers, technology incubator directors, attorneys, financial advisors, consultants, etc are added benefits of this program. Attempts are also made to resolve/avoid IP issues that commonly impact university-industry partnerships. This program has received very favorable reviews from local, state and national organizations. Introduction The term “Entrepreneur” is of French origin and was first noted in Savary’s 1723 Universal Dictionary of Business as one who undertook a project; was a manufacturer, or a master builder.1 P ge 856.1 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2003, American Society for Engineering Education Adam Smith (1723-1790), who is commonly accepted as the father of free enterprise economics, used the standard terms of the times, that of “projectors and undertakers” to identify entrepreneurial individuals.2 Unfortunately, the former term was often given to shady dealers and the latter was subsequently, and for no known reason given over to funeral directors. Smith’s undertaker was a “mere capitalist” and while he was important as a decision maker in regard to the division of labor, he was ahead of his time in terms of identifying innovation, the use of capital and the division of labor (but not technology per se) and its dependency on the markets. Jean Baptiste Say (1767 – 1832), who is particularly well known for his “law of markets” and “theory of production” visualized three components of the production process: human industry, capital and national agents.3 He was the first in economic history to identify the value that is contributed to the system by the entrepreneur. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1972) was the first in modern times to come out foursquare in placing the entrepreneurs in the same rank as, if not more important than, the three classical agents of economics – land, capital and labor.4 The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883 – 1950) believed that the action of entrepreneurs, working their innovations and technology on the market introduces change to what otherwise might be a system at rest or in equilibrium.5 Schumpeter saw five possible scenarios that would create a metamorphosis that causes a disequilibrium: 1) introduction of a new product or a new quality, neither of which the consumer is familiar with; 2) application of a new production method or process that relies on innovation, rather than invention; 3) opening up a new market; 4) a new or innovative servicing of material or components and 5) establishing a new organization, either in structure or type. What sets Schumpeter apart from others is that his theory positions the entrepreneur in the role of the prime mover. Others economists who preceded him, Adam Smith, Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832), and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1972), for example, describe the entrepreneur as a speculator, a co-ordinator or an innovator. Contemporary Models of Entrepreneurship There have been a number of contemporary models of entrepreneurship. In one of the first efforts to explain what makes up an entrepreneur, Blake and Saleh6 combine personality factors, knowledge, managerial mechanisms and environmental forces in a schematic that traces out the entrepreneurial process. In this model, the entrepreneur begins a venture by coping with environmental change through three critical responses: 1) uncertainty management 2) knowledge filtering and 3) the exploitation of environmental change. What the individual does in this process is helped or hindered by personality characteristics that play a role in guiding the use of mechanisms to perform successfully. The idea is that a person’s characteristics will encourage risktaking or networking and co-ordination to bring about a successful launch. This process is initiated by certain occurrences or issues that exist in the environment. An opportunity is seen by the entrepreneur, perhaps as a result of environmental change, who then, through efforts of personality, uses a number of mechanisms such as innovations, or market attraction, to make things happen. In the Entrepreneurial Model propounded by Ford, Churchill and Walker,7 there are three classifications that reveal the entrepreneur: These include the historical roots of an individual which are said to be important in bringing him or her to the point of creating the new venture this Historical Background which includes family, culture physiology, demographics, etc. establishes the values that guide individuals in life and make an important contribution to the P ge 856.2 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2003, American Society for Engineering Education entrepreneur. The Personal Elements of the individual (Motivation, Personality, Abilities, Skills) are critical in setting out to understand the entrepreneur and the effect organizational abilities might have on the process. Finally, there is the Outcome, which in fact becomes the process itself: entrepreneurship. In this model, Motivation is the operant condition that initiates the entrepreneurial process. It is the individual desire to build something, to gain recognition or to reach a particular end-state that kick-starts the push to a self-determined future. The new venture creator with a need for recognition and who is confident of his ability to perform will be very motivated. Fred Fry8 has suggested that these variables do come together in an equation: M = Ai x Ti Where M= Motivation Ai = Antecedent variables (e.g. background, creativity, personality, experience, and education) Ti = Triggering factors such as job loss, opportunity, idea, environmental change, etc.) Fry incorporates a “Triggering event” as a component of motivation. The Antecedent Variables emphasize the roles that historical and personal variables play in defining the entrepreneur. In examining technically-oriented entrepreneurs, Robert Edwards9 lists three primary causes (a) independence, (b) challenge and (c) monetary reasons to be low on the list as being critical to the high tech entrepreneur. Freeser and Dugan10 have determined that four factors, distilled from eleven motivational elements, are able to set out the parameters that make up the motivation to become entrepreneurial: (a) feeling of frustration with the employer (b) desire to avoid working for others and be properly rewarded for one’s own efforts (c) drive for challenge and advancement (d) intense drive to do one’s own thing, to develop one’s own ideas. Teaching of Entrepreneurship The field of “Teaching of Entrepreneurship”11 has been divided as to whether entrepreneurship can be taught or not. Those who favor it as an independent academic discipline see it as a distinctive, if not unique component of the free enterprise system. In this respect, it creates wealth, improves the productivity of a region, adds to employment, and offers a more exciting dimension to society. A second consideration is that entrepreneurship contains specific knowledge, concepts and theories that apply in a reasonable and consistent manner across the discipline. The search for an opportunity, the verification or viability of the opportunity and the language of financing are distinct and particular to entrepreneurship in its own right.12 Those who do not favor an entrepreneurship discipline are becoming less vocal in their opposition than in the past. Entrepreneurship courses and programs are starting up in business and engineering colleges of esteemed universities. What does remain is the lingering argument that much of what is applied in the process of entrepreneurship includes material that overlaps in other courses. In the early days, a number of large universities claimed that the functions of management – planning, organizing, controllingare very much evident in entrepreneurship and need not be treated as a uniquely different discipline. The debate did not recognize two critically important features of an entrepreneur: The role of creativity in entrepreneurship, whereby the new concept, invention and innovation that literally takes charge of the entrepreneur. Second, there is the vision th