Conference Session

Critical Success Factors for Technopolis Creation

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lisa Zidek, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Cindy Orndoff; Susan Blanchard

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

analyze the case in theirnewly formed teams. Teams were assigned by the instructors using the “team application” tocreate teams that were interdisciplinary (based on the three engineering majors in the class),diverse and mixture of traditional and non-traditional students.Creativity and ideation were the next topics covered. Following brief discussions regardingmethods of increasing creativity, the students participated in in-class exercises demonstrating thecreative process. In-class activities included writing a story about an abstract picture, as a team,devising answers to hypothetical questions and using dissimilar fields to solve a commonproblem

Conference Session

Systems Engineering and Entrepreneurship

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Carmo D'Cruz, Florida Tech; Shoaib Shaikh, Northrop Grumman Corporation

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

Systems Engineering coursesoffered by the Department of Engineering Systems at Florida Tech have greatly enriched thestudents’ educational experience, broadened their perspectives, served as community outreachforums and integrated experiential learning with academic programs. Students work in E-teamsand write NCIIA proposals to commercialize innovative product or university/research labdeveloped technology.This paper describes a unique course series in Systems Engineering (SE) Entrepreneurship.Innovation in product/service design and commercialization that enables entrepreneurship can besuccessfully leveraged by applying SE principles/ techniques which parallel entrepreneurshipsteps such as Customer Requirements Engineering and opportunity

Conference Session

Best Practices in Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Daniel Raviv, Florida Atlantic University; Brandon Moore, Florida Atlantic University; Eiki Martinson, Florida Atlantic University

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

is so great how come no one thought about it before”, to “I knew thatthis design will not work” (…no alternative suggested). When I told the idea to peers at FAU andbeyond the response was “Ha-ha, sounds like another cold fusion…”, “There is nothing newabout it”, and (semi-happily) “We heard that it failed”. The sponsor decided that it was going to work on a particular day, invited more than fiftypeople (too late for us to undo), and … nothing happened. This was the time when I felt thatmore motivation meetings were essential to keep the moral high. We came up with morealternative designs, but unfortunately none of them worked. By then the sponsor had investedmore than half of the project budget and had applied for multiple patents

Conference Session

Best Practices in Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William Birmingham, Grove City College; Blair Allison, Grove City College; James Dupree, Grove City College

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

have strongentrepreneurial interests. These students want to develop their design projects into commercialproducts. One venue for commercializing design at our institution, Grove City College (GCC), isthe annual on-campus business plan competition. For the last four years, business andentrepreneurship students often partner in writing a business plan. Students received writtenfeedback from practicing technology entrepreneurs on their plans. That students report thecompetition as a favorable experience fostered the idea for what we called the High TechVenture Start-up course.The business plan competition, however, lacked several essential elements to be a fullyintegrated and maximally valuable educational experience. As important as business

Conference Session

Assessing Entrepreneurship Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jeffrey Blessing, Milwaukee School of Engineering; John D. Gassert, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Lawrence J. Schmedeman, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Larry Fennigkoh, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

entrepreneurshipeducation. In contrast, we are just getting started on our endeavor to introduce entrepreneurshipeducation and to ultimately make it a permanent part of our curriculum. Page 12.917.3In summary, here are the main challenges to our efforts: CHALLENGES TO INSTILLING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION AT MSOE 1. How to achieve our main goal of getting the schools of business and engineering to work together as peers in an effort to promote entrepreneurship. 2. How to encourage faculty to take on the new task of teaching entrepreneurship when they are already handling a heavy workload. 3. How to get students excited about