Teaching Innovative Product Development Skills To Freshman Engineering Students

The development of this course of instruction was motivated by several factors. One is the relatively new emphasis at Louisiana Tech University on entrepreneurship. This emphasis has a central focal point on campus, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, or CEnIT. The mission of this center is to create an innovative entrepreneurial culture at Louisiana Tech University. In order to change a culture, it is reasonable to begin with new members of that culture. Another factor is the authors’ desire to see an improvement in the senior design projects for the capstone mechanical engineering design course sequence. These projects could benefit by attempting to have a marketable product as a final result. A third factor is the belief that entrepreneurship begins by having ideas about a product, and survives by being able to do something with the idea, and that ability can be taught. Entrepreneurial courses have been offered at Tech, typically to upperclassmen. The goal of this project is to effect these changes by providing freshman engineering students with experience in product development.