A multi-pronged approach to nurturing IT entrepreneurs

Interest in engineering entrepreneurship has grown dramatically over the last few years. This is not surprising given the potential rewards of a successful entrepreneurial career both with respect to allowing entrepreneurs the freedom to pursue their own ideas and visions as well as with respect to the potential for large material rewards. But how do we nurture students to become successful entrepreneurs? In this paper, we report on an innovative program at the authors’ institution, designed to nurture students to become IT entrepreneurs. While the program builds on the experiences of other programs, it includes a number of novel components that are integrated together in an unusual manner to interlock and complement each other.