We received a 2008 Sustainable Vision grant from the NCIIA for a proposal titled "Pico-hydropower franchises: a test bed in rural Honduras." This grant enabled us to establish two village-level electricity companies in north-central Honduras, which have become development laboratories to determine best practices for both our technical and business operations. Our goal has been to refine our engineering and operations tasks with sufficient detail that future systems can be established as true franchises. The "business-in-a-box" aspect of electricity companies as franchises enables rural agricultural workers to operate and maintain electrical generation and distribution equipment and provides the necessary business structure for success. Villagers enter the franchise without cash and ultimately share a portion of the profits after capital expenditures have been recouped. Villagers and investors earn income from the franchises, which also generate environmental and social benefits resulting from decreased usage of fossil fuel-burning lanterns and increased quality of light.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
The lack of clean water remains a critical public health challenge throughout the developing world, and developing viable, sustainable programs is part of this challenge. This presentation describes a business model that was developed in partnership with a Dominican Republic NGO through a NCIIA Sustainable Vision grant. The program incorporates elements of health promotion, social marketing, microfinance and local entrepreneurship to help the rural poor purchase point-of-use water filters. The presenters will share their experiences and lessons learned.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
This session describes the development of a new, low cost, sustainable light source for poor villagers in developing countries called the Twig Light. The light makes use of a compact thermoelectric generator sandwiched and providing a thermal bridge between two pieces of ten-centimeter aluminum channel approximately fifteen centimeters in length. The lower section is cooled by sitting it in a small amount of water, while the upper section serves as a combustion chamber in which small pieces of wood or other combustible materials are burned. The subsequent temperature difference across the thermoelectric generator results in enough power to light a bank of LEDs sufficient to illuminate a small room. The technology was distributed in the rural Ghanaian village of Domeabra in the summer of 2009, and the performance will be evaluated during a return visit in 2010.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
Since 2006, two state universities and one private university in Michigan have been working together to educate students to become more entrepreneurial through curricular and extra-curricular activities. By leveraging strengths of the collaborating universities, University Collaboration in Entrepreneurship Education (UCEE) brings the best resources to its collective 65,000 students. UCEE collaborators share a common core curriculum and an inter-institutional simulated business development activity. A communications network, internships, seminars, business coaching, student entrepreneurship club events, and business plan competitions are promoted across mid-Michigan to students at partner institutions. Faculties collaborate on course development and teaching, and share resources to develop expertise and build capacity. UCEE demonstrates how a consortium of universities with the same objective can maximize their efforts for the benefit of their combined student bodies.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
Students from a variety of majors at North Dakota State University have opportunities to select elective courses that focus on entrepreneurial skills and competencies. One of these is a multi-level, multidisciplinary, multi-year course known as the Bison Microventure. It is a one-credit elective course in applications of micro-technologies to product and process development for medical and dental uses. The course is open to sophomores through graduate students and is repeatable for credit. The team is co-mentored by a manufacturing engineering professor and a biochemistry research laboratory director. This session will review the learning methods, accomplishments and challenges of the innovation team during its first five semesters of operation. It will conclude with some observations of the contributions that innovation teams can make to mainstream engineering and science education.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
This session reports on the successes and failures experienced during the implementation of a graduate-level Certificate in Technology Entrepreneurship program. The two-year program on commercializing technology was launched in 2008 and is jointly delivered by the University of Portland (UP) and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). The innovative courses developed for the program have been approved by the OHSU School of Medicine Graduate Council and UP. Only five students are accepted to join the program each year from each institution. One of the stated program objectives is to start new companies or secure technology licensing deals. Attendees of this session will learn about the design of this novel program and hear directly from one or more students in the program about their experiences.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
During the innovation process, it is often necessary to make quick estimates such as market size. The Fermi estimate is a quantitative tool that produces a quick, rough estimate of a quantity, which is either difficult or inconvenient to measure directly. Although numerous worked-out solutions to Fermi questions are available in the literature, a systematic approach to solving them is not. To meet this need, the authors developed a solution methodology, to be used in their invention course, which could be easily implemented in a traditional business course as well. The methodology employs a graphical approach that assists students in identifying the network of key factors leading to the final estimate. The authors have found that practice with the methodology leads to clearer thinking, more accurate estimates, and greater confidence in making estimates, especially those that initially seem impossible.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason II
There is a growing need for models and pedagogy that assimilate state of the art academic research with knowledge gained in practice and input from strategic stakeholders. In this session, we present a web-based venture readiness assessment tool crafted with input from focus groups and surveys of equity investors (angels and venture capitalists) and entrepreneurs. The tool was designed to provide a framework for first-stage screening for investment decisions in technology business ventures. The assessment tool has been successfully used to teach students in the university setting how to determine the likelihood of gaining equity investment and how to subsequently write a business plan for new technology ventures. We present the results of the application of this assessment tool based on an experiment with 140 graduate and undergraduate students. A model for using this pedagogy in the classroom is presented, as well as projects and lessons learned during the first offering of this program.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason II
One challenge of learning entrepreneurial skills and knowledge is that the classroom is an academic setting (silo knowledge delivery, controlled time tasks, tests to evaluate knowledge gained), not a business setting (use of broad knowledge bases, non-predictable tasks and time, success based on overall project execution). One way to bring the realities of entrepreneurship into the class is to have an entrepreneur bring his/her business challenge into the classroom as a live case. Student teams are handed open-ended business challenges to develop a solution in roughly nine days. Live cases help build students' tolerance for ambiguity, build skills in identifying and filling information gaps to make decisions, and deliver a quality pitch. In the paper and presentation, examples of live cases will be provided, as well as Live Case Outline (to be provided to the entrepreneur) and grading rubric.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason II
Villgro (formerly Rural Innovations Network) is a social enterprise established in 2001 and based in the Chennai District of Tamilnadu State in India. Its mission is to identify and incubate grassroots technological innovations that can have a significant impact on rural lives and enable these innovations to reach rural markets. Villgro identifies these innovations and helps to develop and market them. Villgro believes that many rural innovations can be successfully commercialized as micro-enterprises benefiting rural consumers and contributing to sustainable wealth creation. Once a model is established to transform ideas with potential into reality, a virtuous cycle comes in to operation, encouraging further innovation and wealth creation in rural areas. As an incubator, Villgro impacts all aspects of this cycle: innovation, rural enterprise, rural users and wealth creation. The panelists are interested in sharing their experiences with innovation, enterprise and development with attendees, with an aim to initiate a dialogue on technology, creativity and the synergies needed to enable the rural poor to overcome poverty.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
This session describes the exciting and rewarding process of designing a bicycle that was created in collaboration with Ugandan bicycle couriers. In Uganda, many residents use low cost, poor quality bicycles for their primary means of transportation. The design process started with a connection to an American resident of Uganda. This mediator formed a "design team" of Ugandan couriers who gathered regularly and discussed the ideas the designer had for a new cargo bike design. After several iterations on paper, and communication through email, a design was finalized and an initial prototype was made. The designer then traveled to Uganda to meet the couriers and to have the bike tested and critiqued. Through the successes and failures, valuable lessons were learned regarding the design of products for people in developing nations.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
The lead battery industry in developing countries is growing rapidly as a result of rapid motorization, increases in off-grid power technologies, and requirements for backup power supplies. Unfortunately, sustainable collection policies and recycling practices have not been adopted by most nations. As a result of the lack of formal recycling infrastructure and relatively high values of lead, lead batteries are often recycled in informal backyard smelters, creating high levels of environmental and occupational pollution. This paper discusses the Better Environmental Sustainability Targets (BEST) certification for battery production. BEST is a voluntary certification that battery manufactures can opt for, ensuring that they meet minimum requirements for occupational safety and used battery recovery. BEST certification has been initiated in India and Vietnam. This paper discusses the potential for BEST certification to reduce lead exposures in the developing world.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
This presentation describes a multi-year collaboration between Malian and American schools of engineering, business and agriculture in the design of an evaporative cooler to efficiently cool a small building in sub-Saharan Africa. Highlights include an innovative water delivery system that can simultaneously cool beverages, easy-to-use pad holders designed to fit indigenous pad materials, and a decorative, culturally inspired exterior. Technical work included fan sizing,water usage, Solid Works drawings,an extended field test, and analysis of the in-country manufacture and assembly of the unit. A revised design will be installed in a classroom at the National School of Engineering in Bamako Mali this year to encourage diffusion of the low energy cooling technology. A business plan and market analysis were also performed.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
Social entrepreneurship is the use of entrepreneurial principles to solve a social problem or create sustainable social value. This study assessed the feasibility of initiating a social entrepreneurship program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The feasibility was measured by gathering data from two different environments: WPI's campus, and universities in the US offering social entrepreneurship programs. WPI student survey results, focus group results, and faculty interviews demonstrated a general lack of understanding of social entrepreneurship on campus. A deeper analysis, however, demonstrated that students and faculty members are interested in social entrepreneurship, especially in the form of sustainability and related fields. The recommendations for implementation of a program at WPI include raising awareness of the subject on campus and gradually introducing extracurricular activities to eventually lead into more robust activities such as projects, courses, and ventures.
Friday March 26, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason II
We have developed the Eplum model to engage students and faculty across campus in humanitarian engineering and social entrepreneurial ventures. The objective is the convergence of disciplines, concepts, cultures, and countries toward a freer, friendlier, fairer and more sustainable planet. The model engages students and faculty in well-defined global civic engagement projects in various formal and informal ways, from the sub-credit to multi-credit level. During the spring 2009 semester, 151 students participated in three ventures in Kenya: Mashavu (telemedicine), WishVast (social networking) and Eco-Village. We will present the model and share preliminary assessment results of the impact of these projects on students' knowledge acquisition, self-perceptions, and future career plans. We will also present the conceptual framework of the Eplum model assessment effort, which seeks to understand how different forms and levels of engagement in these ventures leads to the internationalization, public scholarship and multidisciplinary teamwork outcomes at various levels.
Friday March 26, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason II
In 2004, we received a grant from NCIIA to develop a new graduate course in development engineering. It went through four iterations based on feedback received from students and faculty. The final iteration was offered in academic year 2008-09 as a six-credit hour course titled Sustainable Community Development I (SCD I, fall) and II (SCD II, spring). SCD I emphasizes a public health perspective and participatory models, with an overview of development and global health concepts and issues. SCD II covers the principles, practices and strategies of appropriate technology as part of an integrated and systems approach to community-based development. This latest version of the course will be offered for the foreseeable future. This session describes challenges faced in developing the different course iterations and how to include social entrepreneurship and public heath in engineering education.
Friday March 26, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason II
Bayer Material Science and Carnegie Mellon University's Industrial Design Program joined together to forecast new material technology applications in specific markets. Though industry and educational collaboration is not unique, it is the problem set of appropriate design ideation for particular material technology and the innovative design process that provides a rare combination of results. The use of macro future trends research and small scale qualitative action research proved to be effective methods for building new conceptual ideas for next-step supplier applications. This paper will present a product design studio case of higher education and a global material supplier developing methods to integrate and collaborate toward common goals. The process of using different and divergent multi-method research approaches to provide insight and concept confirmation will show how a curricular model can coincide with industry needs.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
In the world of design education, students often have strong ambitions to become entrepreneurs in capacities ranging from self-employment to manufacturing their own products. Educators have armed students with tools they need to become competent industrial design professionals but fall short in readying them for opportunities in entrepreneurial ventures. This session will focus on new curriculum components that target the preparation of students for opportunities in self-employment and other entrepreneurial activities. These components enable students to hear real world case studies and apply them to their particular aspirations. The end goal is to arm students with knowledge and foresight when pursuing entrepreneurial careers or when an entrepreneurial opportunity arises.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
One of the inherent dilemmas regarding the teaching of innovation is that if we, as teachers, become too prescriptive or recipe-oriented with our assignments and lectures, we run the risk of missing the very essence of innovative thinking. How do we teach a subject that really can't be taught in the same formal manner as a language or science course? The answer lies in the teacher's ability to not be overly restrictive and create an environment conducive to innovative thinking. What is this environment and what kind of tools and activities help students tap into the part of their brain that allows for innovation? The author describes various tools and activities he has used in his industrial design studio to promote innovation amongst his students. The most powerful of these is the activity of tinkering, and is the focus of this session.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason II
Beginning with the earliest stages of developing an invention and continuing through to commercialization, it is prudent to assess the competitive patent landscape. Knowing the competitions' proprietary advantage is important in defining a new product's features and specifications to avoid a potential lawsuit for patent infringement. Too often this is ignored and the new product has to be redesigned in response to a cease and desist letter. While it is preferable that a patent attorney be engaged to evaluate this threat during the design process, financial limitations of the inventor may make this unfeasible. Accordingly, the authors' simplified method of classifying patents may be the most practical alternative and the resulting data can be incorporated in table form into a business plan. The authors explain the rationale for the seven basic classifications and provide a real-world application of the method.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
To successfully complete the Engineering Technology Capstone Design Sequence at Texas A&M, student teams must function as small startup ventures to transition an idea, opportunity or problem statement to a fully functional product prototype ready for operational testing and validation. With the programs' new-found success, both public and private sector organizations are becoming actively involved in the sponsorship of capstone projects. Issues such as intellectual property rights and licensing are now being addressed so that guidelines and procedures are in place to insure a true winning experience for students, faculty and the external sponsor. Working with the Office of Technology Commercialization, our programs have established a formal process for protecting and transferring intellectual property know-how to the sponsoring organization or managing the IP for licensing and commercialization. This session describes the process, provides examples of success, and presents the lessons learned.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
The US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) does not collect data on pro se (without legal representation) patent applications. Therefore, the challenges faced by the pro se inventor-applicants are hidden. The author subjected himself to the PTO's patent examination process as a pro se applicant for a first-hand experience of the process, which resulted in an issued patent in December 2009. The author's experience is included as an illustrative case with a contributed third-party evaluation by a registered patent attorney. A tool proposed in this presentation assesses the quality of the patent examination process at the USPTO. The author demonstrates how, at various stages in the examination process, the pro se applicant is pushed to the point of abandoning his/her application prematurely. Detailed recommendations for reforming the USPTO are offered; the USPTO is making an effort to make the changes recommended.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason II
