Paul Hudnut
My Schedule
7:30 AM
to 8:00 AM
Breakfast
29 Attendees
Location
Ballroom
Type Conference Events, Meals
Enjoy a complimentary breakfast in the main stage area.
8:00 AM
to 9:00 AM
Opening plenary with Tina Seelig and James Barlow
34 Attendees
Location
Ballroom
Join us for the kickoff session of the NCIIA annual conference, designed to ignite innovation. Come prepared for an experiential exercise that will get your creative juices flowing and stimulate spirited collaboration. You will get a chance to work with your colleagues on a fast-paced challenge focusing on strategy, team work, and creative problem solving.
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Developing Entrepreneurship Curricula for Sustainable Development
9 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
Interest in technology entrepreneurship aimed at solving the most intractable of global problems in the developing world is at an all-time high. A vast number of education programs, especially in engineering- and design-related degree programs, focus on developing appropriate technology solutions to Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) challenges in sectors such as food, water, energy, health, education and global connectivity. For many years, funding organizations have underwritten such efforts, only to see successful technologies that ultimately failed in the adoption cycle. The global community has largely come to the conclusion that technologies often fail because of they were never turned into sustainable enterprises. The authors have significant experience creating ventures in a developing world context (Africa, Mexico, American Indian, etc.) and in developing for-credit and non-credit technology entrepreneurship curricula for sustainable development. This session will discuss their experiences and offer suggestions for implementing successful ventures and curricula.
Tags Thurs 1A2
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Guiding Principles for Sustainable Humanitarian Engineering Projects
6 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
The engineering profession must embrace a new mission statement: to contribute to the building of a more sustainable, stable, and equitable world. Recently, engineering students and professionals in the US have shown more interest in directly addressing the needs of developing communities worldwide. That interest has taken the form of short- and medium-term international trips through Engineers Without Borders-USA and similar organizations. There are also several instances where this kind of outreach work has been integrated into engineering education. This paper addresses the challenges and opportunities associated with balancing two goals in engineering for humanitarian development projects: (i) effective sustainable community development, and (ii) meaningful education of engineers. Guiding principles necessary to meet those two goals are proposed.
Tags Thurs 1A1
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
PIET: Building a heuristic, interdisciplinary program focused on commercializing clean energy technologies in the developing world
8 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
In 2008, the University of California, in partnership with NCIIA, created the Program for International Energy Technologies (PIET) in order to accelerate the dissemination of low cost, clean energy, energy efficient solutions into the market in developing countries. The main objectives of this initiative are to: build an on-going program that will educate and engage UC Davis students in energy-related issues in developing countries; bridge the current gap between the need and existing technologies by creating market-based, entrepreneurial dissemination strategies; and allow student teams to create an impact on partner communities. The program's founder, Kurt Kornbluth, will talk about the PIET approach as well as curricula, the challenges and successes in development of the program, and highlights the current projects.
Tags Thurs 1A3
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Teaching Entrepreneurship Using Design Pedagogy
13 Attendees
Location
Jackson
This workshop introduces the pedagogy for the Babson College course Social Entrepreneurship by Design (SED). The course integrates stakeholder collaborative design and entrepreneurship for the purpose of developing new products or services that contribute to the solution of a social problem. Attendees of this workshop will participate in small teams to experience facets of designing new social entrepreneurship ventures driven by stakeholder insights. Stakeholder collaborative design is a five-phase process designed to help students create and co-create opportunities. Different from a traditional new product development course, SED emphasizes idea generation and opportunity creation using a structured creativity toolkit grounded in design thinking and principles found in such disciplines as architecture, product design, and engineering. SED is designed to develop the entrepreneurial thinking skills of students where empathy and creation take precedence over analysis and planning.
Tags Thurs 1B
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Beyond the Business Plan: Building implementation into an entrepreneurship curriculum
3 Attendees
Location
Mason I
This session reports on an innovative entrepreneurship curriculum designed to facilitate the actual implementation of student business ventures as part of a core entrepreneurial curriculum across disciplines. The capstone experience in many university entrepreneurial programs revolves around the development and review of business plans in courses or competitions. This curriculum was created to emphasize implementation over planning. The courses are housed under the Center for Innovation at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. Beginning with a freshmen-level creative problem-solving course, students identify business ideas and build on them throughout the course sequence. Winners of a college business plan competition receive the right to launch their start-ups as part of the curriculum's capstone offering, a two-semester sequence entitled New Venture Creation I and II. Upon completion of this curriculum, all students can earn either a certificate or minor in entrepreneurship.
Tags Thurs 2E2
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Insights from Young Entrepreneurs
6 Attendees
Location
Sansome
Type Student Development, Panels
In most colleges, entrepreneurship programs strive to help students be "major+" graduates: students complete their selected major and gain the unique "plus" skills and knowledge in entrepreneurship. Does this approach succeed? This panel brings together five or six young graduates from a variety of colleges and majors with entrepreneurship programs to discuss how well their education has served (or not served) them in being entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. The session will have three segments. First, panelists will briefly overview their backgrounds and current careers. Second, they will answer questions on topics such as what they wish they had learned in college, failure, challenges, and what ethical dilemmas have they faced. The remainder of the session will be open Q&A. The goal is for the audience to gain insights into effective entrepreneurship education.
Tags Thurs 2A
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Credit Well Deserved: Strengthening the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility and poverty alleviation
4 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
We provide a new conceptual model that has the potential to bridge the capacity of companies and the needs of the underserved by harnessing the opportunity of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Analysts have suggested that CSR initiatives have the potential to effectively address global poverty and economic development issues. This paper makes a business case for corporations to align their CSR strategies with core business activities, such as design, development, and dissemination, to encourage the availability of products to people in developing countries. While some companies are on the vanguard of the CSR movement, the majority of firms are seeking some form of tangible, convincing measure of the return on investment of CSR before moving forward with such activities. This report suggests a quantifiable solution to this end.
Tags Thurs 2C2
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Open Design-based Strategies to Enhance Appropriate Technology Development
9 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
The appropriate technology (AT) movement is being driven by inventors and innovators who are interested in designing technologies that are culturally, environmentally and economically appropriate, and feasible to construct and use for people anywhere in the world. This paper examines how open sharing of designs, specifications and technical information can enhance effectiveness, widespread use, and innovation of AT. This commons-based open design method has been highly successful for software development (e.g. open source), and has also begun to be used in other fields through unique partnerships, and using new information-sharing technologies on the internet. This paper critically demonstrates key examples of open design successes that can be applied to development of AT. It also identifies potential barriers to open sourcing AT designs, analyzes business models for open design in the context of AT, and outlines practical solutions with examples currently underway.
Tags Thurs 2C3
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Social Entrepreneurship
6 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
This study examined social entrepreneurship in the context of the academic field by looking at forms of implementation at universities across the country. Thirty-two universities were selected to be contacted about their respective programs. The goal of contacting universities was to create an easily viewed and comprehensive database featuring key information about each SE program. The included universities were chosen based on various sources, including Ashoka rankings, AACSB information, national university program rankings and articles on the subject. The surveys of the universities provided insight into established SE curricula and program structures. The findings of this study have shown that many universities have varied programs in both offerings and size, and while the programs are typically popular with students from a wide variety of majors, popularity is impacted by the way the university defines SE.
Tags Thurs 2C1
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Build-It Modules: A hands-on approach to teaching appropriate technologies and manufacturing techniques
12 Attendees
Location
Jackson
Amy Smith, Kofi Taha, Gwyn Jones, Benjamin Linder, Nathan Cooke, Jessica Huang
Build-It modules are designed to give students experience with a variety of tools and manufacturing techniques while at the same time exposing them to simple, elegant appropriate technologies. These modules show both rapid prototyping equipment as well as techniques that are used in workshops in the developing world. Basic shop safety training is incorporated into all modules and, in the spirit of sustainability, the final product from all modules is a useful item that can be disseminated to community partners in future trips. Successful Build-It modules include a hacksaw made from bicycle parts, a corn sheller for removing kernels from dried corn cobs, a press for making charcoal briquettes from agricultural waste, a simple PVC water pump, and a solar light. The Build-It module format can accommodate a variety of products and can easily be adapted to demonstrate use of different tools, equipment, and techniques.
Tags Thurs 2B
12:30 PM
to 2:30 PM
Lunch and keynote speaker Doug Richard
28 Attendees
Location
Ballroom
Type Conference Events, Meals
Doug Richard is a leading proponent and practitioner of entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom and the US. In this keynote address, Doug will discuss entrepreneurship, its importance in the modern economy, and the role of government and universities in catalyzing entrepreneurship. Doug will talk about: Why the public interest is best served by self-interest; Why the most successful enterprises are all social enterprises; Why entrepreneurs are never born, only made; Why the US must learn to export entrepreneurship not merely to the rest of the world but the rest of the nation; Why governments can only create playing fields; Why capital is not what limits the rate of entrepreneurship; and Why universities are our best hope for cultural change.
8:00 AM
to 9:00 AM
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Design, Implementation and Assessment of Entrepreneurial Workshops for an Entire University Faculty
8 Attendees
Location
Sansome
Kettering University is implementing an entrepreneurship initiative across the university. The topic will be included in various forms in all disciplines--engineering, applied math & science, business and liberal studies. The goal is a university-wide culture change resulting in a mindset of entrepreneurial spirit. A series of eight workshops is described enabling faculty to participate in the cultural change. This paper describes the organization of the design team, workshop topics and activities, entrepreneurial modules embedded into classes, and an initial assessment of the program. Key items include: workshop topics, examples of classroom innovations, comments from participants, and the assessment process used. The design team believes that students will benefit society by (1) the incorporation of innovative activities into classes, (2) engaging with faculty who are interested in expanding the application of science and technology through innovation, and (3) cooperative education sponsors eager to employ innovative students toward the development of new opportunities. Financial support for this activity from the Kern Family Foundation is graciously acknowledged and appreciated.
Tags Fri 1E3
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
L-RAMP Presentation and Discussion
2 Attendees
Location
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.
Tags Fri 1C
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Engineering the Common Good Through Service-Learning
7 Attendees
Location
Jackson
John Duffy
Both practitioners and researchers are discovering that service-learning is not only a powerful pedagogy for increased learning of course content but also an effective means to engage students and faculty in serving communities for the common good. Come learn the what, why, and how of integrating service-learning into existing courses and assessing the benefits to students, faculty, community, and institution. Participants will actively: explore the benefits and applicability of service-learning, based on research and examples, to their course(s); identify opportunities for service-learning engagement in an existing course and with potential community partners; choose appropriate methods of classroom research/assessment for that project; identify available resources for more information and ideas on service-learning in engineering; learn the pitfalls to avoid; and create a media piece/poster targeted to prospective students.
Tags Fri 1A
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Preparing Students to Travel Overseas: Experiences from MIT's D-Lab
6 Attendees
Location
Washington
Type Student Development, Workshops
Nadia Elkordy, Gwyn Jones, Kendra Leith, Ariel Phillips, Amy Smith, Kofi Taha
For many students, addressing challenges faced in developing countries is the most rewarding application of their education. Over the several years of their existence, D-Lab courses at MIT have been taken by many students, most of whom travel to developing countries as part of their project work. Instructors and students alike frequently face interesting and surprising challenges before and during trips. Often, what we have prepared in university classrooms and workshops looks very different when we arrive in the field. For example, it's easy to forget simple things, like making personal introductions before launching into project questions in a new village. This workshop will provide an overview of the history and development of MIT's D-Lab family of courses, as well as perspectives from former D-Lab students and trip leaders about such challenges as advance communication with community partners, design obstacles, and difficult team dynamics. We will also share stories of successful practices and lessons learned the hard way, both before and during trips. We will include opportunities for attendees to discuss their experiences and knowledge about preparing students for travel.
Tags Fri 2C
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Lead Battery Manufacturing Certification in the Developing World: Applying BEST standards in India and Vietnam
5 Attendees
Location
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.
Tags Fri 2A1
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Sustainable Design for Sub-Saharan Africa
7 Attendees
Location
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.
Tags Fri 2A2
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
Cash is Queen, People are King: A workshop on creating high-functioning student E-Teams
9 Attendees
Location
Jackson
The teams that apply for, and are funded by, NCIIA grants are parallel in structure and function to real-world startup teams. Many have an initial imbalance of skill sets that require recruiting partners from complimentary areas of expertise. When formed, it's inevitable that E-Teams encounter some type of conflict. As the world of entrepreneurship is littered with teams gone wrong, this workshop is focused on surfacing the typical team challenges and conflicts that the participants have experienced, while brainstorming solutions to strengthen E-Teams throughout NCIIA schools. The presenters will highlight, through entrepreneurial video clips and their own personal experiences, challenges and solutions they have encountered throughout their careers with student entrepreneurs. Participants will leave the session with practical ideas and a tool kit of resources (including video clips, books and mentoring approaches) to create and support higher-functioning teams with their student entrepreneurs.
Tags Fri 2B
12:30 PM
to 2:30 PM
Julia Novy-Hildesley, Executive Director, The Lemelson Foundation
11 Attendees
Location
Ballroom
Type Conference Events
12:30 PM
to 2:30 PM
Olympus Innovation Awards luncheon
12 Attendees
Location
Ballroom
Recognizing faculty excellence and innovation in higher education.
2:30 PM
to 4:00 PM
Student Development Workshop (students only)
6 Attendees
Location
Sansome
Type Student Development, Workshops
One of the many challenges when setting up your venture is knowing how and where to spend that scarcest resource of all, your time. Building your networks, developing your product or service, understanding how your strategy evolves along with every new bit of information you discover, and working out how to keep your business progressing the way you want can be tough with so many moving pieces. This highly interactive session will help you develop the way you think strategically and understand how to build meaningful relationships with customers, partners and potential investors as well as mentors and advisors in the most effective way.
Tags Fri 3A
2:30 PM
to 4:00 PM
IdeaBounce as a Pedagogical Model
8 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
Type Tools and Resources, Papers
IdeaBounce is a website and event used to facilitate idea creation and collaboration. Budding entrepreneurs post information about their ideas (without giving away too much) at www.ideabounce.com, then deliver a two-minute elevator pitch to solicit additional feedback. This allows for virtual and in-person connections. In the classroom, faculty can require each student or groups of students to post and pitch. At the institutional level, public IdeaBounce events can be held to encourage cross-campus participation.
Tags Fri 3B1
6:30 PM
to 11:59 PM
March Madness for the Mind
21 Attendees
Location
Exploratorium
The March Madness for the Mind exhibition is a celebration of student E-Team innovation and entrepreneurship. Each year, top E-Teams (collaborating groups of college students, faculty and industry mentors) showcase their work in a science or technology museum during NCIIA's annual meeting, many unveiling their cutting-edge innovations to the public for the first time.
8:00 AM
to 9:00 AM
Breakfast plenary: Steve Blank
22 Attendees
Location
Ballroom
Type Conference Events, Meals
Steve Blank, author of Four Steps to the Epiphany, will share currents and trends in Silicon Valley as they relate to entrepreneurship and design thinking educators.
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Creating Supply Chains for New Ventures in Developing Countries
3 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
Supply chain development is critical in starting up new business ventures in both the developed and developing worlds. Supply chain modeling can help optimize profits and product quality. However, several modeling assumptions must be re-defined for developing countries. In the process of starting a business in Ghana, it became obvious that supply chain modeling is not the same as it is in the US and a study to model and optimize supply chains has uncovered several specific differences: economic bargaining, discrete even modeling using a different concept of time as a metric and communication using cell phones instead of computers.
Tags Sat 1D2
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
Project Management Techniques for BoP Student Enterprise Projects
4 Attendees
Location
Montgomery
A specific example from Colorado State University's Global Social Sustainable Enterprises Program demonstrates the creation and execution of student projects targeting Base of the Pyramid customers with triple-bottom-line business enterprises. This paper provides an overview of project process and discusses one particular project in depth. The Running Water International team created a successful enterprise selling biosand water filtration systems in Kenya. The RWI team found four key factors to their success: 1) Multiple dimensions of diversity among team members; 2) Strong motivation of team members to create measurable impact; 3) Team value of choosing people over project; 4) Active project partner in-country.
Tags Sat 1D1
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
What's Your Problem? Designing Questions that Lead to Creative Solutions
13 Attendees
Location
Jackson
Some people call it Need Finding, others call it Point of View, and others call it Problem Definition. Whatever you call it, crafting a thoughtful question is key to finding a valuable solution. Without a well-thought-out problem, the resulting solutions are apt to be mundane or meaningless. This workshop will focus on framing problems in ways that lead to the most creative solutions. Participants will be introduced to powerful techniques that facilitate the process of finding innovative solutions to challenging problems in all areas, including design, research, business, teaching, and in their personal lives.
Tags Sat 1E
9:00 AM
to 10:30 AM
OPEN to Success: Entrepreneurship bootcamps--what they are, what they should be, and what your students should get from them
3 Attendees
Location
Sansome
Type Tools and Resources, Workshops
At what stage in the start-up process should students participate in a bootcamp? Should they be heterogeneous or homogeneous with regard to experience level and business focus of participants? This will be a discussion in which participants can explore the possibilities and recommendations of entrepreneurship educators who are at the forefront of providing these experiences.
Tags Sat 1C
11:00 AM
to 12:30 PM
UC Davis D-Lab Activity: Build a small wind generator in two hours!
8 Attendees
Location
Sansome
Type Clean Energy, Workshops
The WindBelt wind generator is a example of a "confluent technology": a design that grows out of the highly constrained energy landscape of developing countries with far-reaching applications worldwide. This hands-on workshop, adopted from the UC Davis D-Lab curriculum, will teach participants the basic theory behind power generation and walk them through the steps to build one. Each group will build a working prototype from scratch and test it in the NCIIA "wind tunnel." The workshop will include: basic theory behind power generation; an overview of the need for small-scale power generation in the developing world; the use of basic hand tools; the use of jigs and fixtures; and the basics of wind power.
Tags Sat 2B
