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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
BallroomBallroom
Panelists will discuss innovative approaches to monetizing intellectual property. Examples to be presented include the approach of Intellectual Ventures, which creates new inventions, invests in existing inventions, and partners with individuals, universities, and research labs to develop inventions; emerging models in the university landscape such as the iBridge Network, an online platform that aggregates university-based research, investigators and technology acquirers, resulting in 850 transactions over three years; the Pediatric Medical Device Idea Campaign, which seeks to engage a broad community in the innovation process; and the evolution of IBM's approach to IP, and its Smarter Planet initiative, which aims to make many aspects of our world 'smarter' by optimizing knowledge sharing and network utilization for a better way of living.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason I
The KEEN mission is to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering graduates to foster the innovative application of technical expertise to customer needs. KEEN also stresses the concept that the entrepreneurial mindset incorporates social values and business acumen. This process is transformational and requires a comprehensive approach involving faculty, alumni, curricular, and co-curricular components. The Lawrence program is unique in its plan to develop entrepreneurial skills into a mindset through constant reinforcement; the total immersion strategy includes implementing course modifications to nearly 70% of the engineering curriculum. Workshops with committed faculty across all disciplines will facilitate inclusion of entrepreneurship in the courses. This strategy also includes development of co-curricular and extracurricular activities supported by alumni and a resident entrepreneur. This presentation is an overview of the total program.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
Kettering University has been a member of the KEEN network of engineering schools for four years. We have moved from (1) the initial formation of a single class on entrepreneurship and a student society, to (2) a full-blown program to institute entrepreneurship across the entire curriculum, to (3) the next phase of instilling entrepreneurship across the entire university--faculty, students, staff, and administrators. The challenges have been great but we have met them head-on and see ourselves as leaders in instilling the entrepreneurial mindset across an entire institution. We will discuss our accomplishments to date and how we intend to meet our goals for the near future.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
Many universities offer entrepreneurship education. The Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) offers a different form of entrepreneurial education for engineering students. In contrast to entrepreneurship education, the KEEN schools are changing engineering education by instilling the entrepreneurial mindset into all of their engineering students so that as graduates these engineers will be entrepreneurial whether they are engineers drawing a salary, intrapreneurs in mid- to large-sized companies, or principals in start-up companies. This paper will describe the four attributes of entrepreneurial engineers and the theory of change being followed by this network of colleges. An assessment rubric will be described from which a SWOT analysis of eleven attributes can be formulated.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
The University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) has developed a number of technical entrepreneurship case studies that are designed to be integrated into existing engineering fundamentals courses. These case studies are intended to illustrate ways that entrepreneurs have capitalized on their knowledge of specific engineering topics covered in typical undergraduate courses to create successful business ventures. The aim is to repeatedly showcase successful engineering entrepreneurs and to provide routine exposures to principles of entrepreneurship throughout the curriculum. The ideal, long-term vision is to have one or more case studies for each engineering course. This paper summarizes the twelve cases that have been developed thus far (several more are under development). The materials have been developed using rich media and are freely available online. Initial feedback has been very positive and the results of ongoing assessment will be shared in later publications. This work is sponsored by the Kern Family Foundation through its Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN).
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Montgomery
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
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Jackson
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason I
Michigan Technological University, in collaboration with MTEC SmartZone, has developed a program for targeted development of student-led startup companies based on outcomes of engineering capstone design projects. Under the SmartTrac program, student teams that include a cross-section of business, engineering, and communications skills form companies who conduct the necessary business and technical development activities to commercialize capstone project outcomes. In addition to basic underwriting funding for student stipends, the partners work together to find grant and investment capital from various sources. The SmartTrac model will be presented as well as experiences to-date in commercializing a hospital mattress that substantially improves the effectiveness of CPR. The technology was developed in a capstone project, has been patented by the university, and is licensed to a student-led company, CPRM Inc., which to-date has attracted nearly $200k in funding from various sources.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason I
Continuous process improvement (CPI) has improved product and business performance in many industries and business sectors. However, it has not been widely adopted in the new technology venture (NTV) sector. The resistance to CPI adoption has been attributed to the perception of insufficient payoff and protracted timelines. In addition, there has been a tendency toward heroic management of chaotic ad hoc processes in a rapid response environment with an overarching first-to-market imperative. Western Michigan University is developing a study to determine if CPI would improve product and business performance in this sector. This paper describes how and why new technology ventures may benefit from CPI initiatives that arose from the aerospace industry. If this study confirms the applicability and benefit in the NTV sector, findings could equip practitioners with a proven framework, CMMI®, to aid in systematically increasing the successful launch rates of new technology ventures.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason I
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
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Sansome
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Jackson
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.
Thursday March 25, 2010 12:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
BallroomBallroom
Over the last several years, programs that teach entrepreneurship have found and/or developed a variety of ways to assess student performance. Although assessment has been discussed in many forms at the NCIIA conference and other national meetings, it should be an ongoing topic--one in which new and emerging programs can learn from those with more experience. This panel/discussion will focus on tried and true methods of assessing student performance in entrepreneurship-focused courses as well as novel methods that are being introduced by both new and established programs. The discussion will not focus on empirical assessment data, but rather on entrepreneurship course learning objectives and different methods used to assess them.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Sansome
The 2007 inaugural address of RIT's ninth president, William Destler, highlighted the breadth and diversity of curricular offerings at RIT from business, engineering, and computing to design, fine art, and craft. In his address, Dr. Destler included this challenge: "What if RIT students had the experience of working on complex societal problems with students from different majors on teams in...a cross-disciplinary effort to find real solutions?" The authors of this paper took that challenge to heart. In the 2008-09 academic year, we created a collaboration curriculum that was hosted by the RIT Honors program. The outcome of the program is an integrated "innovation suite" comprised of the following components: 1. innovation activities, 2. collaborative learning environments 3. collaborative technologies 4. learning outcomes and curricular models for innovation and 5. community-university partnerships. This integrated suite of innovation components will continue to grow in the new Center for Student Innovation at RIT.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason I
Four Michigan public universities, collaborating with private sector for-profit companies and state government agencies supporting technology commercialization and innovation, have successfully implemented methods for building and sustaining entrepreneurship, technology development and commercialization at emerging research institutions: distributing the cost, promoting best practices and affecting the cultural changes within institutions necessary for sustaining these activities. This program, led by Michigan Technological University has produced a model, termed U-TEAMED (Multi-University Technological and Expertise Assets Management for Enterprise Development). The emergent model offers guidance for identifying and capturing the important features of sustainable, faculty-led early-stage technology innovation and entrepreneurship education programs at emerging research institutions. Lessons include methods for securing revenue, sustaining faculty enthusiasm, anticipating IP and commercialization barriers derived from faculty-student collaborations, and creating an academic environment supportive of embedding technology innovation and entrepreneurship in academic curricula.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason I
The nearly exponential growth of the entrepreneurial community at University of Michigan (U-M) is largely attributed to the students themselves. In January 2008, U-M launched the Center for Entrepreneurship to support these students. Through these and other similar efforts, students of like mind on a campus of nearly 40,000, can network, share ideas and pursue their passions. By January 2009, seven students actively involved in their own ventures joined together to find ways to share resources and ideas to accelerate the launch of their ventures.This resulted in the launch of a student run business accelerator, TechArb (techarb.org), in the Summer of 2009. The seven founders secured real estate in downtown Ann Arbor and invited 30 entrepreneurial-minded students, representing seven companies in the music, technology, and biotech industries. This paper discusses the genesis and results of the first U-M student accelerator.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Mason I
Engineering student projects that address problems in the developing world are becoming increasingly common. Difficulties that arise from collaboration with remote communities and academic institutions raise important ethical questions, e.g, the degree to which meaningful input from the stakeholders is incorporated into the technical component of the project and the quality and duration of the interaction between the constituent groups.
To ensure maximum benefit to both parties, this panel believes that searching questions need to be asked that specifically address these issues and the question of for whose benefit is the work being undertaken.
These enquiries extend to every aspect of the project, from the possibility of exploitation of the communities in the developing countries to the perception by North American engineering students that technical projects can be formulated without a deep understanding and assessment of the environment within which the solution is to be implemented.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Montgomery
This workshop is a result of an on-going NCIIA-sponsored project for the design and development of an innovation-focused event (Ideation to Innovation, I2I). In this hands-on, interactive workshop participants will learn about: (a) the traits of innovative individuals, and (b) enhancing individuals' innovative skills. Innovators share some common traits, many of which can be learned and enhanced. Quick literature survey shows some commonalities between Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, and many others, some of which will be discussed. In particular, the workshop will present traits such as observing, thinking, experimenting, teaming, dreaming, persisting, having fun, and being passionate about the work. Hands-on exercises and teasers will allow participants to experience most of the discussed innovators' skills, and to use them in a classroom setting.
Thursday March 25, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Jackson
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
The last mile in the development of a new venture, moving from feasible concept to business, can result in the venture never starting. Entrepreneurs, especially those in rural communities, often lack access to the resources and expertise needed to harden the concept and convert it to an operating business. In 2009, the N2TEC Institute launched a unique summer accelerator program that included an AI2V intensive workshop and an eight-week period that addressed the critical knowledge, expertise, and resource issues of the participants by surrounding them with a team of mentors and experts. The result was the launch of five new businesses in South Dakota and one in Oregon. Participants were selected from a national call for technology entrepreneurs willing to move to Sioux Falls for the summer, receive a stipend of $15,000, and work aggressively toward the launch of their business.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Washington
To achieve the development of the entrepreneurial mindset, Lawrence Technological University is implementing a holistic approach that will infuse entrepreneurship in the engineering curriculum. This total immersion strategy consists of modifying thirty courses comprising nearly 70% of all engineering coursework (including courses in Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Mathematics). The faculty teaching these courses will fulfill a three-year commitment including yearly intensive workshops and frequent collaboration with peers. This will lead to the inclusion of entrepreneurship in their courses and the creation of a teachable point of view on entrepreneurship. It is also necessary that faculty instructing engineering students understand the importance of incorporating entrepreneurship in their courses. Rather than teaching entrepreneurship in a few courses, in this approach the basic tenets are presented frequently and in diverse venues with systematic repetition that fosters the development of a transformational mindset in engineering students.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
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.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
This paper outlines the experiences at the School of Engineering at the University of Dayton in the implementing the Product Realization Process (PRP) in industry-sponsored capstone team design projects with an emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurship and developing business plans. In 1996 we began using the PRP in engineering capstone courses with eleven projects from four companies. We now implement over eighty projects each year from approximately forty companies annually. The total number of companies that have sponsored projects is now over 100. Approximately thirty capstone projects per year are related to innovation and entrepreneurship and include elements of market studies, intellectual property investigations, cost estimating, manufacturing and the development of a business plan.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
There is an urgent and critical need to restore and improve the competitive position of the United States' economy. The education of our future engineers is at the forefront of these challenges. Working, living, and prospering in this challenging environment require a new breed of leaders, and especially engineers, with a broader set of skills and experiences. This paper will focus on a new model of engineering entrepreneurship education advanced by the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network, a collection of twenty small and mid-sized private engineering schools. One school, the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), will be presented. With the support of the Kern Family Foundation, IIT developed the Kern Innovation and Entrepreneurship Academy (KIEA). The principle objective of KIEA is preparing undergraduate engineers equipped with an action-orientated entrepreneurial mindset that will contribute to business success and transform the US workforce. This paper will explore the conception, development, launch, assessment and succession dimensions associated with this new model of undergraduate engineering education.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
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
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.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Jackson
Through the stories of three students and faculty, learn how to fully leverage NCIIA grants and resources for success. This session will provide an update on current and future NCIIA programs and participants will be able to query NCIIA staff on programs, including: grants for student teams and faculty (in the $20,000-$50,000 range) to support technology innovation, entrepreneurship and social impact; student venture competitions; creativity, innovation and venture development workshops; NCIIA mentoring services for qualified student teams; Venture Well advisory services for venture development and raising investment.
Friday March 26, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Montgomery
Our student program to conceive, prototype, and potentially launch products--particularly in the medical technology arena--spans a wide range of age groups and subject areas. Student levels range from middle school to graduate school (including medical school) and cover disciplines as varied as physics, history, and business. Part of the glue holding the program together is an adaptable curriculum to teach both the technical aspects of prototyping and the wider range of issues (needs assessment, market analysis, etc.) associated with product development. The goal is to create a unified community of purpose and mutual instruction, where students at different levels feel that they make an important contribution both to a product itself and to the knowledge shared by members of the project. Major challenges to this approach include maintaining continuity and focus, but these challenges are offset by large benefits in learning and creativity.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
Success in business requires innovation. Today's model calls for a more intuitive integration of creativity throughout the decision making process: the application of design thinking to business. There is a great opportunity for design to improve one's ability to increase a firm's value offerings. While goods are traditionally embedded with value, there is currently a paradigm shift occurring in marketing and goods are being viewed as operant resources that produce effects for customers. Thus, the good really becomes a service provider. While design is still critically important in product development, it is becoming more important in how marketers design strategy successfully. This presentation will look at how to integrate design thinking into the business model, debating the pros and cons of design thinking integration, and the importance of teaching innovative thinking in academia.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
Looking back at the history of science and technology over the last few hundred years, we can identify people such as Thomas Edison, James Watt and Graham Bell as innovators, due to the outward result of their endeavors. However, it is harder to recognize Isaac Newton as an innovator, even though he was able to develop the concept of calculus, almost overnight, to overcome the hurdles to the mathematical problems he was trying to solve. Fast forward to the 21st century. What makes an innovator? How do we cultivate innovation? Do we teach them? Train them? In this session, the author will share his experience of the last twenty years in Singapore, where he started promoting innovation as a binder that can hold concept with reality, art with design, form with function, abstract with concrete, fuzzy with focus and idea with business.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
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.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Washington
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
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.
Friday March 26, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Jackson
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.
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
NCIIA and SRII (Service Research Innovation Institute) are collaborating to drive university research and curriculum development to meet the future skills and expertise required to further grow the Service economy globally. The panel discussion will include the following: SRII's overall strategy for driving Service Innovation; SRII's focus on research and curriculum development in university programs, including a joint university research agenda/funding model, driving for a new MS in Service Science degree program (a multidisciplinary degree program incorporating sectors such as IT, computer science, IE, business management, etc.), and undergraduate electives and certification programs; SRII/NCIIA partnership plan/joint membership; and SRII as a resource for NCIIA members.
Friday March 26, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Washington
This workshop is designed to provide attendees with an overview of tools to assess student learning outcomes related to entrepreneurship education. By the end of the workshop, attendees should have a set of assessment resources that they can adopt in their engineering-based and campus-wide entrepreneurship programs. The presenters will introduce a new assessment tool that was developed for an in-depth, multi-institution study (Entrepreneurship Education and its Impact on Engineering Student Outcomes: The Role of Program Characteristics and Faculty Beliefs) funded by NSF. The new tool draws on items currently or previously used at the institutions involved in the study (Purdue, Penn State University, North Carolina State University, and NCIIA), as well as others identified in the literature. Purdue University is examining the effect of entrepreneurship education on engineering student learning outcomes. To measure the outcomes, the presenters developed a new assessment instrument targeted at senior-level engineering students enrolled in capstone design courses. Items fall into the following categories: 1) demographic data (sex, ethnicity, engineering discipline, majors/minors); 2) entrepreneurial background/experience (parents/family careers, work experience, entrepreneurial education and experiences); 3) career goals; 4) knowledge/familiarity with entrepreneurial terms and concepts; and 5) entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The workshop will provide an overview of the assessment instruments that were considered by the research team and the methodology used to create the final instrument. It will also address several challenges encountered during development and administration including choices of response scales, length, and student and faculty participation.
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.
Friday March 26, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Montgomery
This session presents a new design user value-measuring matrix that can be highly beneficial in the industrial design educational environment. This value-measuring matrix provides a system to analyze user and market characteristics to direct appropriate design solutions. Developing a successful product is the key goal in any design development process. This innovative new value matrix enables students and beginning design practitioners alike to make informed decisions in design development phases, particularly in initial planning. The matrix will help them identify important design variables prior to starting a new design or redesign for a different market and user. The matrix addresses important aspects of a successful product: language/design semantics, functional requirements, the user experience, and environmental responsibility. Initial trials of the matrix have proven to be effective in improving design efficiency in student projects.
Friday March 26, 2010 2:30pm - 4:00pm PDT
Montgomery
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.
Friday March 26, 2010 6:30pm - 11:59pm PDT
ExploratoriumExploratorium
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.
Saturday March 27, 2010 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
BallroomBallroom
Union College is a Liberal Arts school with a nationally recognized engineering program. Students at Union College are encouraged to reach beyond traditional disciplines in order to insure they have the breath of education necessary to succeed in the competitive global economy. The Engineering-Liberal Arts Entrepreneurship Seminar is part of an ongoing program at Union College to support innovation and entrepreneurship. The course, taught by an economics professor and a mechanical engineering professor, is supported by business school faculty, venture capitalists, legal experts, economic development experts, and entrepreneurs in the region that come to class to share their expertise and experience with the student teams. The teams are composed of an engineering senior and his or her senior project, along with two-to-three students majoring in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The course is about interdisciplinary communication, teamwork, social responsibility, entrepreneurship and commercialization.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason I
Engineering is a meticulous and methodical neat freak; entrepreneurship is a disheveled compulsive gambler. Engineering lived happily in a crowded but fastidiously kept curriculum; that all changed when Entrepreneurship moved in and started unpacking. This is the story of how the two have gotten along and how they're able to share the same space. This paper gives a map of a prototypical mechanical engineering curriculum and overlays it with various entrepreneurial engineering educational elements. The paper includes a basic review of some of the various tools and techniques used to weave in entrepreneurial engineering elements, including one such technique developed at the University of Detroit Mercy: the technical entrepreneurship video-rich case study.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason I
This session will explain and explore the four-step Skandalaris Philosophy to Developing Entrepreneurs, which is being implemented across the seven Schools and Colleges at Washington University in St. Louis. This new approach to entrepreneurship pedagogy includes multi-level, multidisciplinary courses which, as a whole, increase students' self-efficacy and confidence in their skills to pursue entrepreneurship. There are forty-five courses at the university that fall into one of the four steps to the Approach: Perspectives Courses Skills Courses Simulated Experience Courses Action/Outcome Courses Entrepreneurship is found at all levels and in all disciplines at the university. For this reason, the Center is independent of all Schools and Colleges and reports directly to the Chancellor to remain pure to its cross-campus mission and maintain transparency. There are no prerequisites to enrollment in the courses, which promotes peer learning and collaboration among all students, thereby increasing creativity and innovation.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Mason I
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
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.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
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.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Montgomery
Students at Penn State University are working on a social entrepreneurial venture in Kenya called Mashavu: Networked Health Solutions for the Developing World. Mashavu is a telemedicine system that enables medical professionals to connect with patients in rural communities. The Mashavu kiosk operators, medical practitioners, website administrators and other individuals connected to the Mashavu network are expected to adhere to the highest principles of ethical conduct. We developed Code of Ethics for Mashavu based on universal health policies and guidelines, but our observations and lessons learned while conducting field research in Kenya have forced us to rethink our approach to developing and ensuring compliance with our Code of Ethics. This study explores the realities of privacy, liability, trust, hygiene, quality, business practices and social customs in developing communities and presents the systems approach applied by our team to develop the ethical, policy and compliance framework to roll-out the Mashavu venture.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Montgomery
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.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Jackson
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.
Saturday March 27, 2010 9:00am - 10:30am PDT
Sansome
Effecting an undergraduate student culture that encourages entrepreneurship and inventorship is a worthy goal, with metrics of success ranging from the gratification of self employment to the economic impact of small business creation. We have started an undergraduate competition called The InVenture Prize to provide incentives, resources, and structure for student innovation in a fun, high-profile event. In our first year, over 200 undergraduates (1.5% of population) expressed intent to compete in the competition. At the climax (March 2009), eight finalists faced a judge panel on stage before an audience of 200. The event was recognized by a front-page article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, by the state legislature (Representative Bob Smith), and by Georgia Tech interim president Gary Shuster in his opening remarks at the competition. The winners received $15,000, patent applications ($40,000 value), and additional commercialization assistance. Next year's competition will be even larger and more successful.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason I
The results of entrepreneurial idea pitch and research proposal competitions often determine the award of cash prizes (e.g. $100,000 at MIT) and scarce resources. The recipients of these awards are determined by judging processes. These judging processes are rarely audited or evaluated as to quality or consistency. In this session, the competition judging quality issue will be described, the results of calculating Awg for a variety of competitions will be shared, interventions identified as possible causes of higher levels of consistency will be identified, recommendations will be made as to how to produce a higher level of Awg (meaning higher quality competition judging processes), and participation in collaborative application of the recommendations will be solicited in order to continue the research.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason I
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University business students, faculty, and administration have gone through an unprecedented seismic change in the way their economic, social, and civic environments have shifted. The rebuilding of New Orleans has coincided with an increased interest and focus on social entrepreneurship and conscious capitalism. This session will discuss the changes that have occurred through one program of Tulane University's A. B. Freeman School of Business, the Tulane Business Plan Competition (TBPC). Now in its tenth year, the TBPC has evolved from a standard business plan contest into a clearly missioned champion of social entrepreneurship. We will present and discuss the different factors that have led to this evolution.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Mason I
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.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Sansome
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
An economic model based on self-reliance introduced in the Democratic Republic, Congo has in three years transformed a community of 4,000 people from abject poverty into one of Congo's largest rice producers. Our class series develops "leapfrog" technologies, allowing developing countries to bypass the carbon-rich step taken by the West. Our goal is a high standard of living that neither damages the environment nor subordinates the community to conventional energy supplies. We offer this model to faculty working to bring technical solutions to global problems for people at the base of the pyramid. We will discuss the economic model as well as the development of renewable energy technologies with a strong emphasis on efficiency and restraint of excess. In particular we will discuss several different kinds of solar technologies, ox power, and the use of biomass, including building materials, fuel for burning, and methane gas.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
Experiential learning has been emphasized in the School of Engineering at the University of Dayton for over twenty-five years. The evolution has gone from individual projects to team projects and from single discipline to multidisciplinary teams. Industry-sponsored projects were formalized in 1996 with the formation of the Design and Manufacturing Clinic. Further, innovation and entrepreneurship were better integrated in 2004 with the formation of the Innovation Center. The percentage of projects related to design for the environment, design of thermal systems and renewable energy systems reached about one-third of the capstone design projects. Simultaneously, emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship has increased in the same proportion. The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences of entrepreneurship and sustainability over these last five years. Thus, this session covers the applied aspects of sustainability and entrepreneurship in design education.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
The Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN) of Ukiah, California and the Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES) have formed a partnership to design eco-friendly buildings that utilize sustainability best practices and renewable energy technology, as well as reflect the long-standing culture and traditions of the PPN. We present the yurt-style house design created by this partnership and illustrate how Native American tribes can partner with universities and other organizations to utilize engineering expertise to develop solutions that address the needs of the tribes. As a result of this partnership, the yurt-style house design created can be used to create centralized housing and office buildings in Ukiah that will aid in the unification and economic advancement of the PPN. The buildings will also let members take advantage of job training and other educational services provided by the PPN. Construction of the design began in July 2009.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Montgomery
Project-based service learning (PBSL) has become an emergent opportunity for engineering education. There are now a number of national and university-grown programs that provide opportunities to incorporate PBSL into engineering and other fields. Despite their rapid adoption, one problem persists with PBSL programs: the scant findings on their impacts. Yet preliminary observations are encouraging, and suggest that PBSL: 1) retains students; 2) increases female representation; and 3) offers an opportunity to fulfill a variety of critical learning outcomes. A PBSL Summit, supported by the National Science Foundation, was held in early 2009 to gather, summarize, and leverage the expertise of participants to identify desired outcome metrics, quality assessment methods, and key next steps needed in understanding the impacts of PBSL. The goals of this session are to engage attendees in a review of both curricular and extracurricular community service activities and their features, share outcomes observed from such programs, identify existing gaps, and create tangible next steps for beneficial change. The session leaders hope to build off the discussion initiated in the 2009 Summit, adding the views and experiences of session participants to reports and e-books prior to international dissemination.
Saturday March 27, 2010 11:00am - 12:30pm PDT
Jackson
