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Paper 2007-2797

Improving Entrepreneurship Team Performance through Market Feasibility Analysis, Early Identification of Technical Requirements, and Intellectual Property Support

Abstract Choosing the wrong technology—due to insurmountable technical hurdles, market limitations, or resource constraints—can be devastating to a start-up company. Either the company deftly changes directions or it ceases to exist. While experiencing these realities may provide invaluable entrepreneurial life lessons, because of structured academic calendars, course commitments, the requirement for grades, and other factors, it is very difficult to drop a technology or disband a company staffed by students fulfilling university educational requirements. Many university-based entrepreneurial education centers provide real-world projects for participating students. The University of Florida Integrated Technology Ventures (ITV) program, launched in Fall 2003, is designed to provide engineering, business and law students with an intense, immersive entrepreneurial experience. Participating students are members of a virtual company led by a serial entrepreneur who acts as a volunteer CEO. The focus of the company is to commercialize university intellectual property. To improve the chances of successfully adopting a new technological innovation and boosting entrepreneurial team performance, we propose an improved way to select suitable technologies, better timing for delivering market-driven requirements to product designers, and enhanced understanding of the implications of business and technical decisions with regards to impact on intellectual property.

Introduction Life in a start-up technology business is no doubt a rich learning experience. Resources such as capital, facilities, people, and ideas are severely constrained. This environment forces one to adapt quickly or find another activity. While it may not be feasible to replicate all the chaos and pressure associated with such an endeavor in an academic environment, researchers at the University of Florida believe it is possible to come close. The Integrated Technology Ventures (ITV) program provides a conduit for business, engineering and law students to gain valuable entrepreneurial experience developing emerging technologies from the university’s intellectual property portfolio. The students work in virtual companies under the guidance of seasoned CEO consultants, university inventors, and business, engineering, and law school faculty mentors. The ITV program has been in operation since fall 2003. Since that time nine virtual companies have been formed and over 70 students have participated. After the pilot offering, it was recognized that several issues were limiting the overall “Proceedings of the 2007 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2007, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Stanfill, R. K., & Astleford, T. (2007, June), Improving Entrepreneurship Team Performance Through Market Feasibility Analysis, Early Identification Of Technical Requirements, And Intellectual Property Support Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--2956