Getting Engineers to Think and Act like Entrepreneurs

摘要

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is pioneering the education of undergraduate entrepreneurial engineers. Engenius Solutions is a program funded through a grant from the Lilly Foundation. The project, at Rose-Hulman, is offering capital and other resources to help undergraduate engineers understand what it takes to recognize opportunities and turn them into entrepreneurial ventures. Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to submit ideas to Engenius Solutions for evaluation and review. Following an in-depth qualification procedure, those deemed to have potential are then given project resources including student project teams, prototyping support, work space, Intellectual Property support, and project management to help develop their idea. Engenius Solutions also provides financial, marketing, and business insight to assist their clients (students, faculty, staff) in taking ideas from concept to market. Future plans include accepting clients from outside the Rose-Hulman community. The program is driven by a core management team of four undergraduate students managing the program with limited oversight provided by a Board of Governors. The board consists of faculty and staff from multiple disciplines across the campus. This paper will present an overview of the program: including the management philosophy for both the funded program and the individual client projects. Also covered is a discussion of the underlying project objective - allowing students to run a project, with limited faculty oversight, in an effort to allow engineers to become better acquainted with the business world and more capable of effectively handling interactions between entrepreneurs and large companies. The main focus of the paper will be on the benefits and opportunities provided by allowing students to work on exciting new ideas and projects and on developing their own intellectual property in a multidisciplinary setting. Specifically to be included are the interactions among different engineering disciplines, interactions between engineering disciplines and business disciplines from other schools, and how this will enhance the overall engineering education.