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On this particular brief detail relating to experiential entrepreneurship activities enhance florida techs engineering management.
AC 2007-1352: EXPERIENTIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACTIVITIES ENHANCE
FLORIDA TECH'S ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT GRADUATE PROGRAM
Carmo D'Cruz, Florida Tech
Dr. Carmo D'Cruz is Associate Professor of Engineering Enttrepreneurship in the Department of
Engineering Systems at Florida Tech. He has over 20 years of industrial experience at Bell
Labs,Advanced Micro Devices, Hitachi Semiconductor, RF Monolithics, Harris Semiconductor,
Tantivy Communications and Chip Supply Inc. in addition to teaching experience in the Business
and Engineering Schools at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Muzaffar Shaikh, Florida Tech
Dr. Muzaffar Shaikh is the head of the Department of Engineering Systems at Florida Tech. He
spent 19 years in industry, before he joined Florida Tech in the School of Management. He has
also served as Associate Dean in the Florida Tech School of Management. He has a PhD in
Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Campaign.
Wade Shaw, Florida Tech
Dr. Wade Shaw is Professor in the Department of Engineering Systems in the College of
Engineering at Florida Tech. He is a fellow of the IEEE and a Past President of the IEEE
Engineering Management Society. He has his BSEE, MSEE and PhD in Engineering
Management from Clemson University.
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007
Experiential Entrepreneurship Activities Enhance Florida Tech’s Engineering
Management Program
Carmo D’Cruz, Muzaffar Shaikh, Wade Shaw
Florida Tech, Melbourne, Florida 32901
Abstract
Four courses that form the Innovative Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Course
series in The Engineering Management Program at Florida Tech – Systems Engineering
Entrepreneurship, Technical Marketing, High Tech Product Strategy and Technology
Commercialization Strategies have seen increasing enrollment at Florida Tech, due to the
increasing job opportunities and exposure to the community that the students get as a
result of the experiential activities offered by these courses. These experiential activities
include the monthly “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” seminar series – where
promising engineers-turned- entrepreneurs visit Florida Tech and share their experiences;
the judging of the Brevard School Science Fair Projects for their commercialization value;
collaborating with the city, government and private organizations in the community to
commercialize innovative student-developed technologies; etc. Students work in E-Teams
on their entrepreneurial class projects and write NCIIA/SBIR grant proposals for
funding and also present at the regional/state-level Business Plan Competitions. They are
also members of the Florida Tech Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Club and they
participate in local and national SIFE competitions. All these activities give the
Engineering Management students enough exposure in the community so that they are
often recruited out of class to work on critical projects in the industry. In this paper the
various attributes of this holistic entrepreneurship program are discussed and highlighted.
.
Introduction
While meeting the increasing demand for holistic, interdisciplinary education, innovative courses
offered by Florida Tech’s Department of Engineering Systems have greatly enriched the
students’ educational experience, broadened their perspectives, served as community outreach/
networking forums and integrated experiential learning with academic programs.
This paper describes a pioneering, innovative new course in Systems Engineering
Entrepreneurship that is dove-tailed into three existing courses in Technical Marketing, High
Tech Product Strategy and Technology Commercialization Strategies
1
to complete a course
series and proposed certificate program in Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship. The Systems
Engineering Entrepreneurship course which has received excellent reviews from students, is
being taught for a second successive semester at Florida Tech. This course is uniquely designed
to leverage proven Systems Engineering principles, tools and practices that parallel
entrepreneurship concepts and steps for high tech entrepreneurial success such as Requirements
Engineering, Competitive Analysis, Systems Modeling and Simulation, Product Development
Process Engineering, Project Engineering, Decision and Risk Analysis, Systems Integration,
Performance Assessment, System Launch Considerations, System Life-Cycle Costing, Quality
Engineering, etc.
As part of the course and program requirements, students work in E-teams which can include
outside technical experts as team members or advisors. The E-teams seek funding by completing
NCIIA Advanced E-team proposals
2
or SBIR/STTR proposals and presenting their business
plans at investor-attended colloquiums and competitions.
It is anticipated that the pioneering Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course and program,
with its rigorous cutting edge SE tools and techniques especially in Technology Function
Deployment, Requirements Engineering, Project Engineering, Decision and Risk Analysis, and
Simulation will create new paradigms in entrepreneurship education and will enable the
entrepreneurial high tech endeavors of engineers to be more deterministic than stochastic and
greatly enhance the chances of entrepreneurial success. An expected secondary outcome of this
program is the shift of the locus of entrepreneurship education from the traditional business
schools (which have had limited success in launching highly successful high tech start-ups) to
the engineering schools (which have traditionally been responsible for the sources of most
(>90%) of the successful high tech companies).
3
Engineering and Teaching of Entrepreneurship
Engineers with a Bachelor or Master degree are typically products of a four-year and two-year
university programs respectively, which vary little from university to university, or even country
to country. Entrepreneurial courses can be found in high schools, undergraduate schools,
graduate schools, trade associations, private establishments, short courses, and correspondence
courses. Although there is some agreement on the skills and characteristics needed for
entrepreneurial behavior, there is no consensus on how best to impart the knowledge.
4
The field of “Teaching of Entrepreneurship” in business schools
has been divided as to whether
entrepreneurship can be taught or not.
5
A more appropriate emerging question is “Can
Entrepreneurs Learn?”
6
Those who favor Entrepreneurship as an independent academic
discipline see it as a distinctive, if not unique component of the free enterprise system. In this
respect, it creates wealth, improves the productivity of a region, adds to employment, and offers
a more exciting dimension to society. A second consideration is that entrepreneurship contains
specific knowledge, concepts and theories that apply in a reasonable and consistent manner
across the discipline. The search for an opportunity, the verification or viability of the
opportunity and the language of financing are distinct and particular to entrepreneurship in its
own right.
7
Those who do not favor an entrepreneurship discipline are becoming less vocal in
their opposition than in the past. Entrepreneurship courses and programs are sprouting up in
business and engineering colleges of esteemed universities. What does remain is the lingering
argument that much of what is applied in the process of entrepreneurship includes material that
overlaps in other courses.
8
In the early days, a number of large universities claimed that the functions of management –
planning, organizing, controlling- are very much evident in entrepreneurship and need not be
treated as a uniquely different discipline. The debate did not recognize two critically important
features of an entrepreneur: The role of creativity in entrepreneurship, whereby the new concept,
invention and innovation that literally takes charge of the entrepreneur. Second, there is the
vision that goes along with the new concept. A final argument that the more conservative
academics pursued was that, since a new venture cannot really be created in the classroom, the
concept of entrepreneurship cannot be taught and that the “concept of starting one’s own
business” does not require academic treatment. However, teaching entrepreneurship offers
advantage of avoiding those errors and misjudgments made by individuals who ventured before.
9
The academic propositions in teaching business to young people also apply in the teaching of
entrepreneurship. The number of businesses created and the economic impact of
entrepreneurship courses and programs at Stanford, MIT, University of Texas-Austin and other
leading universities is testimony to the fact that entrepreneurship skills and know-how can be
taught and entrepreneurs can be nurtured through supporting programs in university-based
incubators, entrepreneur associations and local business networks.
10, 11, 12, 13
Important Factors Impacting New Venture Creation
Benjamin Mokry
14
suggests that in order to create a more receptive environment for
entrepreneurship, a number of fundamental societal changes must occur. He supports the major
truism that “local communities are the breeding ground of entrepreneurship” and are capable of
creating environments favorable to it. Mokry has emphasized two factors that affect
entrepreneurial success: 1) Existence of an entrepreneurial sub-culture. The tremendous success
of Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin and San Diego very much support the notion that entrepreneurs
feed off each other in a synergistic fashion and create their own dynamic environment. 2)
Incubators and Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs), many of which are initiated by local
universities/governments as enterprise centers.
Recent studies have developed a more positive awareness of educating people in
entrepreneurship and eventually how to become entrepreneurial. It has been determined that 1)
potential entrepreneurs can be encouraged through university-based entrepreneurship programs
2) entrepreneurship within an established definition can be taught and 3) entrepreneurial alumni
do succeed and they themselves provide further insights and educational materials for
dissemination in the classroom.
15,16, 17
Studies by Wolfe, Adkins and Sherman,
18
have shown that
universities serve as sources of new technologies that might be commercialized by incubator
client firms and other regional start-ups. Universities can also provide other valuable services
and unique resources to both the incubator, its clients and other regional start-ups such as (1)
Faculty / technologist managerial or technical consulting on a pro bono or fee basis (2) Student
interns and employees (3) Access to technical labs, facilities and equipment (4) Access to
databases and researchers (5) Access to research and development financing through programs
such as SBIR – federal grant funding is greatly enhanced when incubator clients submit a joint
proposal with a university or federal laboratory (6) Additional services and resources including
patent knowledge, alumni who may act as advisors, business contacts and strategic alliance
facilitators or investors, access to a far-flung network of laboratories and technical expertise, and
access to investment by university foundations.
All the above mentioned research findings and other issues and environmental factors were
considered when designing the engineering entrepreneurship programs at Florida Tech.
Additionally, leading entrepreneurship programs in the country were benchmarked and the best
practices were adopted.
19, 20, 21, 22, 23
Why Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship?
Henry Ford can be considered a pioneer in the field of Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship. In
1902, the initial investors forced Henry Ford out of the Henry Ford Company they had
established to manufacture the car that Henry had designed. They wanted to manufacture small
quantities of expensive cars for the upper echelons of society. They re-christened the company
the Cadillac Automobile Company and went on to modest success. Henry started the Ford Motor
Company and designed and manufactured the Model T for the masses using systems engineering
principles of proactive product standardization, quality, manufacturability, mass marketability,
etc and with its resounding success, he changed the auto industry and the American lifestyle.
24
Traditionally, engineers in the various disciplines have been trained to solve explicit problems,
such as finding the solutions of n-equations with n-unknowns. In such problems all the required
information is provided, and the solution requires the application of a specific strategy that will
work for all problems of a given type. Unfortunately, the nature of the 21
st
century economy
means that the types of problems that engineers have to solve tend to be more implicit in form.
All the information required for the solution is available, but it is fragmented, dispersed and
requires highly developed perception skills to extract and use successfully. Traditionally, in large
corporations, high levels of creativity and innovative idea generation have not been seen as
central to the engineer’s role. However, to compete in a changing marketplace fraught with
rapidly changing technology, shorter product life-cycles, downsizing and outsourcing, engineers
need to re-invent themselves as independent and entrepreneurial and market their creativity.
25
In
many large corporations, entrepreneurially thinking engineers have been observed to show more
entrepreneurial initiative and a higher level of productivity, efficiency and cost-consciousness. It
is a known fact that engineers who manage their engineering careers as entrepreneurs from the
start enjoy a higher probability of advancing within the company.
26
The Systems Engineering
and Engineering Management degree programs at Florida Tech broaden the typical engineer’s
perspectives considerably with the traditional well-rounded Engineering Management and
Systems Engineering course offerings, as well as complementary innovative courses in Technical
Marketing, High Tech Product Strategy, Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship and Technology
Commercialization Strategies to produce “The Engineer of 2020” as described by the National
Academy of Engineering.
Despite the popularity of these engineering entrepreneurship-related courses, the word
“entrepreneur” is often misunderstood by engineers and some employers as it conjures visions of
larger than life empire-builders who create high risk business ventures that promise either
intoxicating wealth or wretched bankruptcy – and very little in between. Entrepreneurs seem to
thrive in chaotic and uncertain realms, far removed from the orderly and methodical world of
engineers, where calculations and data are applied to design solutions that eliminate uncertainty
and risk. Another misperception is that entrepreneurship courses belong to business schools and
are not engineering-related. However, the truth is that Engineering Principles parallel
Entrepreneurship Concepts. All employers are engaged in a business to produce a return on
investment. An engineer’s compensation package is an investment made by the company.
Whether one is a CEO in charge of a whole company or an engineer overseeing a single task or
project, he or she is responsible for producing a positive return on the investments they are
entrusted to. So all engineers engage in entrepreneurship – but only those who deliver the best
returns on the investment they manage will be in the best positions for advancement.
27,28
Taxonomy of Engineers, Promoters, Managers, Engineering Managers,Engineering
Entrepreneurs and Systems Engineering Entrepreneurs
(Adapted from: Jeffry Timmons’ New Venture Creation)
HIGH
Creativity
and
Innovation
LOW General Management Skills HIGH
* Typical graduates of Business Schools with BBA or MBA degrees
The taxonomy above illustrates the relative skills and characteristics of Engineers, Promoters,
Managers, Engineering Managers, Engineering Entrepreneurs and graduates of Systems
Engineering Programs. As a result of the interdisciplinary nature of the Engineering
Management program and his/her engineering education and experience, the typical Engineering
Management graduate is expected to have higher levels of Creativity and Innovation capabilities
than the typical Promoter and Management graduates of Business school BBA/MBA programs.
The Engineering Entrepreneur with a broad based entrepreneurially-oriented engineering
education rooted heavily in experiential entrepreneurship programs and activities is expected to
develop a higher level of skill sets in Creativity and Innovation as well as general management
skills, business know-how and networking skills. Armed with a cache of Systems Engineering
tool and techniques such as simulation, project engineering, systems integration, Technology
Function Deployment, customer requirement engineering, decision and risk analysis, etc that
make the entrepreneurial process more deterministic and after going through a broad based
entrepreneurially-oriented engineering education rooted heavily in experiential entrepreneurship
programs and activities, the Systems Engineering Entrepreneur graduates have demonstrated the
highest levels of creativity and innovation and general management skills, business know-how
and networking skills.
Engineering
Entrepreneur
Promoter*
Manager/
Administrator*
Engineer/
Inventor
Engineering
Manager
Systems
Engineering
Entrepreneur
A common complaint heard from most high tech entrepreneurs is that their entrepreneurial
projects always take more than 2X the time, the money and the resources than what they planned
for at the outset. The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course at Florida Tech is designed
to allay the above misperceptions, fears and complaints using proven Systems Engineering body
of knowledge in Project Engineering, Systems Integration, Decision and Risk Analysis,
Simulation, Systems Life-Cycle Costing, etc. It has been observed that some of the most
successful high tech and serial entrepreneurs have a systems engineering approach to their
entrepreneurial ventures. This is because of their broad perspective of the competitive
environment and a balanced, methodical and systematic approach to capitalize on the
opportunities to ensure sustained long term success. (See course description in the Appendix).
The influence of Systems Engineering (SE) thinking on entrepreneurship has often been
overlooked in business-school based technological entrepreneurship programs. The innovation
process is significantly improved and made more robust by adopting a SE mindset early in the
timeline. If SE concepts that work so well in engineering are applied to the innovation process,
the quality of the innovation and likelihood of success are improved by significant orders of
magnitude. For example potential investors will look more favorably on a product concept that
has a lifecycle design effort put into the initial model. This leads to a more mature product
development process that is less likely to run into development troubles. Therefore the investors
will see a more desirable opportunity and the entrepreneur significantly improves the probability
of entrepreneurial success.
Goals of the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Program:
The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Program has 5 major goals:
1. Provide a unique, systems engineering – based encouraging environment for engineers to ease
into careers in entrepreneurship and create investable, start-up, technology-based ventures that
will create jobs and function as sustainable, revenue generating high tech companies on the
Space Coast.
2. Experience the process of engineering entrepreneurship from a Systems Engineering
perspective – by identifying and pursuing a business opportunity for a technology / product with
a team of motivated peers and entrepreneur support groups from the community – even if they
decide not to pursue entrepreneurial careers eventually, this experience will make them more
effective entrepreneurs in their organizations
3. Using a Systems Engineering approach, systematically learn how to structure and develop a
business that is attractive to investors and develop products that are popular with customers.
4. Use System Engineering principles and techniques to analyze and alleviate the problems
encountered in starting up a technology-based venture with very high degrees of technical and
market uncertainties
5. Meet practicing professionals and learn from the experiences of seasoned entrepreneurs,
investors and business service providers to get feedback and valuable insights from professionals
and acquire practical knowledge and tools
4-Course Florida Tech Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Program
The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course series and program consists of one new
course module in Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship that is dove-tailed into three existing
course modules in Technical Marketing, High Tech Product Strategy and Technology
Commercialization Strategies.
Module 1: Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship - this module is a comprehensive overview
of Systems Engineering Principles as applied to Engineering Entrepreneurship and the students
will start integrating the various components to develop their business plan. The risks, rewards
and challenges of entrepreneurship, and the system-engineering-based strategies and tactics to
increase the chances of success are systematically covered in this module. Each session of this
module consists of (1) a lecture and case study based on system engineering principles that
parallel an entrepreneurship concept and step and (2) experiential guest lecture/seminar by
industry expert or entrepreneur on entrepreneurial opportunities in emerging fields.
Module 2: Technical Marketing - This module gives the engineers a strong marketing
orientation and shape their innovative high tech idea into the right product for the right
customer, to further increase the chances of market success. This is very critical for engineers to
develop paradigm pliancy and think in terms of the Whole Product, not just their generic
technologies or products.
Module 3: High Tech Product Strategy - This state-of-the-art course module addresses the
formulation of specific high tech product strategies to increase the probability of market success.
These include Product Platform and Product Line Strategies; Differentiation and Price-based
Competitive Strategies; Support Strategies based on Time, Cannibalization, and Global Product
Development and Growth Strategies based on Innovation, Expansion ad Strategic Alliances.
Module 4: Technology Commercialization Strategies - This state-of the-art course is designed
to develop the students' ability to apply the engineering and entrepreneurial processes to
Technology Commercialization. This innovative, overview course will systematically cover the
Technical, Marketing and Business aspects of the Technology Commercialization process in 18
steps through the 3 phases (Concept, Development and Commercial) and six stages
(Investigation, Feasibility, Development, Introduction, Growth and maturity)
The Final Business Plan: Final Business Plan Write up and Presentation. As part of the
proposed certificate requirement, the students would be required to write up a professional
business plan and present it to the NASA / UCF Incubators and Technology Development /
Commercialization Offices and also to Central Florida Investment Corporation and other
interested VCs. Teams of two or three students will work on the development of the business
plan to market an innovative new product or commercialize a promising technology, throughout
the four-course program.
This first-of-a-kind, pioneering course and holistic program address the formulation of specific
strategies to significantly increase the probability of market and technical success.
Entrepreneurship concepts and strategies developed empirically from the experiences of high-
tech companies are applied. These are more practical than theoretical and are intended to push
systems engineering entrepreneurship to the cutting-edge. Through the incisive insights of
leading systems engineering experts, entrepreneurs, numerous examples, and case studies /
interactive discussions simulating the experiences of technical entrepreneurs, this comprehensive
course series systematically covers almost all the issues aspiring technical entrepreneurs should
consider in developing their new ventures., including funding, intellectual property, project
management, timing, technological change, globalization, product positioning, and contingency
planning, as well as marketing and financial considerations. Class sessions focus on the systems
engineering principles and issues which must be faced in starting a new venture and the options
which are available to the technical entrepreneur. Particular emphasis is placed on rigorous
assessment of the technical and business merits of selected innovations through individual and
group projects. VC and Angel-investor developed criteria is taken into consideration when
selecting recipients for funds. Participation in other entrepreneur networking activities on
campus and in the community is kept track of, encouraged and rewarded.
The “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” Experiential Seminar Series
The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course series is complemented by another pioneering
innovation in experiential entrepreneurship at Florida Tech – The “Engineering Entrepreneur in
Spotlight” seminar series. In these seminars typically held twice a month, struggling/successful
local technical entrepreneurs visit the class and present their business plan for critique and
recommendations by the class. Once a month, these “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight”
seminars are open to the public. Over the past three years, these seminars which have got wide
pre- and post-event publicity in the local media, and have become an increasingly important
networking forum for entrepreneurs, inventors investors, business service providers, students and
faculty. As a result of these seminars a number of local business deals and alliances in high tech
entrepreneurship have been consummated and Florida Tech students have secured career-
enhancing opportunities with established and start-up companies as interns, co-op students, or
permanent positions as founders, advisors or technical experts.
Conclusions
The initial impact of the nascent Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship program and
experiential Entrepreneurship activities at Florida Tech has been remarkable.
Elements of the pioneering Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course have been prototyped
and tested in various formats such as seminars, short courses and as entrepreneurial topics in
Systems Engineering courses. The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Course has got
“excellent” reviews and student feedback in the first semester that it was offered.
The “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” seminar series featuring local entrepreneurs,
innovators, inventors and, their research collaborators and entrepreneur networking / service
providers such as Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center (FNBIC), Space Applications
Technology Outreach program (SATOP), Technology Research and Development Authority of
the State of Florida (TRDA), the Alumni Entrepreneur Alliance, The Space Coast EDC and other
local organizations, have seen increasing attendance and have become an increasingly important
networking and discussion forum for local entrepreneurs, inventors, business service providers,
investors, students and faculty.
Two NCIIA grants, totaling about $40K for Florida Tech have been central to the rapid increase
in entrepreneurial participation by undergraduates in the College of Engineering. One of the
grants funded entrepreneurial multi-university wireless senior design projects, while the other
supported a series of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department senior design teams with
entrepreneurial commitment. Additionally, Florida Tech has been an active partner of the NSF-
funded Partnership for Innovation - Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology
Commercialization (CENTECOM) along with UCF, USF and Florida A&M University. The
response to these grants has been extremely positive, with 7 of 13 entrepreneurial senior design
teams in 2005 intending to launch businesses around their senior projects. Additionally, there
were twelve graduate E-teams presenting their business ideas at the Engineering
Entrepreneurship Business Idea Pitching competition. In 2005, Florida Tech was awarded a
Advanced E-Team Grant for an innovative student project, emanating from the “Florida Tech
Senior Design Project Commercialization and Entrepreneurship Program” which includes
courses from the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course series.
33,34
A contagious culture of engineering entrepreneurship and high degree of entrepreneurial
awareness has been created on campus and in the Space Coast community. Two Florida Tech
Student Entrepreneurs Clubs have been formed, affiliated to C-E-O (Collegiate Entrepreneur
Organization) and SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) respectively, with weekly meetings and a
range of experiential activities. Some of the community-wide forums organized by the campus-
based High Tech Business Accelerator such as the 4-session Intellectual Property workshop, the
alumni entrepreneur panel discussion have seen record attendance from faculty, students and the
Space Coast community. The SBIR workshops conducted by the Florida-NASA Business
Incubation Center and the Space Coast EDC drew entrepreneurs and inventors from North, South
and West Florida to the Space Coast. The NCIIA “Invention to Venture” workshop held in
Orlando saw an exponential increase in attendees from the Space Coast. These activities have got
considerable local media publicity.
With the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course and program enabling aspiring and
struggling engineers-turned-entrepreneurs for higher degrees of entrepreneurial success with a
deterministic approach (rather than a stochastic approach) it is anticipated that the locus of high
tech entrepreneurship education will move from business schools to engineering schools.
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APPENDIX
Module 1: Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship
Course Overview:
This is a very resourceful course for skilled engineers and managers with creative product ideas,
but limited knowledge of how to actually start building a company around the ideas. This
cutting-edge course features Systems Engineering – based practical insights, tools, objectives,
strategies and actions that one can apply to any stage of an entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial
venture from initial idea to growth and profitability. The critical roles of marketing, finance and
management are clearly explained as the entrepreneur learns practical and leading-edge system
engineering approaches such as requirements engineering, project engineering, decision and risk
analysis, systems modeling, systems integration, and system launch and quality engineering to
bring products to market and grow the organization. Experiential guest lectures from industry
experts and entrepreneurs on emerging technology trends, roadmaps, and standards processes,
and interaction / networking opportunities with successful or struggling technical entrepreneurs,
corporate intrapreneurs, venture capitalists, technology incubator directors, attorneys, financial
advisors, consultants, etc. will be an added feature of this course.
Course Objectives:
1. Develop an entrepreneurial idea into a commercially viable product line or business
2. Using a Systems Engineering based approach, solve the critical issues involved in
product development, marketing and funding an entrepreneurial product from conception
to profitable growth
3. Use Systems Engineering principles to develop multiple business operating structures for
implementing efficient, long-range coordination, command and control
4. Apply high standards of company-wide quality engineering, project management, risk
analysis
5. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the trends, roadmaps and standards processes
of emerging technologies
6. Write a solid business plan/NCIIA E-Team proposal that attracts funding and keeps the
entrepreneurial business on course
Course Outline: Key: GL=Guest Lecture; EOpps=Entrepreneurial Opportunities
1. Systems Engineering and Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: Self Analysis and Strategic Visioneering
2. Requirements Engineering for Technical Entrepreneurs – Understanding Customer/Market Needs
GL: EOpps through Technology Roadmaps / Standards Processes
3. Competitive Analysis for Engineering Entrepreneurs – Understanding the Competitive
Environment and Protecting IP
GL: EOpps in Software Systems Engineering
4. Business Systems Modeling for Engineering Entrepreneurship – Understanding the Basics of
Accounting and Entrepreneurial Finance
GL: EOpps in Optics Engineering
5. Product Development Process for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Product Development and Improvement
6. Project Engineering for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Civil Engineering
7. Decision and Risk Analysis for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Engineering Consulting
8. Systems Integration for Engineering Entrepreneurship – The Business Plan
GL: EOpps in Wireless Systems Engineering
9. Team Dynamics and Performance Assessment for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Materials Engineering
10. System Launch Consideration for Engineering Entrepreneurs – Integrating Marketing/Sales
GL: EOpps in Hydrogen Economy
11. Quality Engineering Consideration for Sustainable Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Systems Integration
12. Presentation of Final Business Plans or SBIR/STTR Proposals
doc_584628671.pdf
On this particular brief detail relating to experiential entrepreneurship activities enhance florida techs engineering management.
AC 2007-1352: EXPERIENTIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACTIVITIES ENHANCE
FLORIDA TECH'S ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT GRADUATE PROGRAM
Carmo D'Cruz, Florida Tech
Dr. Carmo D'Cruz is Associate Professor of Engineering Enttrepreneurship in the Department of
Engineering Systems at Florida Tech. He has over 20 years of industrial experience at Bell
Labs,Advanced Micro Devices, Hitachi Semiconductor, RF Monolithics, Harris Semiconductor,
Tantivy Communications and Chip Supply Inc. in addition to teaching experience in the Business
and Engineering Schools at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Muzaffar Shaikh, Florida Tech
Dr. Muzaffar Shaikh is the head of the Department of Engineering Systems at Florida Tech. He
spent 19 years in industry, before he joined Florida Tech in the School of Management. He has
also served as Associate Dean in the Florida Tech School of Management. He has a PhD in
Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Campaign.
Wade Shaw, Florida Tech
Dr. Wade Shaw is Professor in the Department of Engineering Systems in the College of
Engineering at Florida Tech. He is a fellow of the IEEE and a Past President of the IEEE
Engineering Management Society. He has his BSEE, MSEE and PhD in Engineering
Management from Clemson University.
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007
Experiential Entrepreneurship Activities Enhance Florida Tech’s Engineering
Management Program
Carmo D’Cruz, Muzaffar Shaikh, Wade Shaw
Florida Tech, Melbourne, Florida 32901
Abstract
Four courses that form the Innovative Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Course
series in The Engineering Management Program at Florida Tech – Systems Engineering
Entrepreneurship, Technical Marketing, High Tech Product Strategy and Technology
Commercialization Strategies have seen increasing enrollment at Florida Tech, due to the
increasing job opportunities and exposure to the community that the students get as a
result of the experiential activities offered by these courses. These experiential activities
include the monthly “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” seminar series – where
promising engineers-turned- entrepreneurs visit Florida Tech and share their experiences;
the judging of the Brevard School Science Fair Projects for their commercialization value;
collaborating with the city, government and private organizations in the community to
commercialize innovative student-developed technologies; etc. Students work in E-Teams
on their entrepreneurial class projects and write NCIIA/SBIR grant proposals for
funding and also present at the regional/state-level Business Plan Competitions. They are
also members of the Florida Tech Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Club and they
participate in local and national SIFE competitions. All these activities give the
Engineering Management students enough exposure in the community so that they are
often recruited out of class to work on critical projects in the industry. In this paper the
various attributes of this holistic entrepreneurship program are discussed and highlighted.
.
Introduction
While meeting the increasing demand for holistic, interdisciplinary education, innovative courses
offered by Florida Tech’s Department of Engineering Systems have greatly enriched the
students’ educational experience, broadened their perspectives, served as community outreach/
networking forums and integrated experiential learning with academic programs.
This paper describes a pioneering, innovative new course in Systems Engineering
Entrepreneurship that is dove-tailed into three existing courses in Technical Marketing, High
Tech Product Strategy and Technology Commercialization Strategies
1
to complete a course
series and proposed certificate program in Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship. The Systems
Engineering Entrepreneurship course which has received excellent reviews from students, is
being taught for a second successive semester at Florida Tech. This course is uniquely designed
to leverage proven Systems Engineering principles, tools and practices that parallel
entrepreneurship concepts and steps for high tech entrepreneurial success such as Requirements
Engineering, Competitive Analysis, Systems Modeling and Simulation, Product Development
Process Engineering, Project Engineering, Decision and Risk Analysis, Systems Integration,
Performance Assessment, System Launch Considerations, System Life-Cycle Costing, Quality
Engineering, etc.
As part of the course and program requirements, students work in E-teams which can include
outside technical experts as team members or advisors. The E-teams seek funding by completing
NCIIA Advanced E-team proposals
2
or SBIR/STTR proposals and presenting their business
plans at investor-attended colloquiums and competitions.
It is anticipated that the pioneering Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course and program,
with its rigorous cutting edge SE tools and techniques especially in Technology Function
Deployment, Requirements Engineering, Project Engineering, Decision and Risk Analysis, and
Simulation will create new paradigms in entrepreneurship education and will enable the
entrepreneurial high tech endeavors of engineers to be more deterministic than stochastic and
greatly enhance the chances of entrepreneurial success. An expected secondary outcome of this
program is the shift of the locus of entrepreneurship education from the traditional business
schools (which have had limited success in launching highly successful high tech start-ups) to
the engineering schools (which have traditionally been responsible for the sources of most
(>90%) of the successful high tech companies).
3
Engineering and Teaching of Entrepreneurship
Engineers with a Bachelor or Master degree are typically products of a four-year and two-year
university programs respectively, which vary little from university to university, or even country
to country. Entrepreneurial courses can be found in high schools, undergraduate schools,
graduate schools, trade associations, private establishments, short courses, and correspondence
courses. Although there is some agreement on the skills and characteristics needed for
entrepreneurial behavior, there is no consensus on how best to impart the knowledge.
4
The field of “Teaching of Entrepreneurship” in business schools
has been divided as to whether
entrepreneurship can be taught or not.
5
A more appropriate emerging question is “Can
Entrepreneurs Learn?”
6
Those who favor Entrepreneurship as an independent academic
discipline see it as a distinctive, if not unique component of the free enterprise system. In this
respect, it creates wealth, improves the productivity of a region, adds to employment, and offers
a more exciting dimension to society. A second consideration is that entrepreneurship contains
specific knowledge, concepts and theories that apply in a reasonable and consistent manner
across the discipline. The search for an opportunity, the verification or viability of the
opportunity and the language of financing are distinct and particular to entrepreneurship in its
own right.
7
Those who do not favor an entrepreneurship discipline are becoming less vocal in
their opposition than in the past. Entrepreneurship courses and programs are sprouting up in
business and engineering colleges of esteemed universities. What does remain is the lingering
argument that much of what is applied in the process of entrepreneurship includes material that
overlaps in other courses.
8
In the early days, a number of large universities claimed that the functions of management –
planning, organizing, controlling- are very much evident in entrepreneurship and need not be
treated as a uniquely different discipline. The debate did not recognize two critically important
features of an entrepreneur: The role of creativity in entrepreneurship, whereby the new concept,
invention and innovation that literally takes charge of the entrepreneur. Second, there is the
vision that goes along with the new concept. A final argument that the more conservative
academics pursued was that, since a new venture cannot really be created in the classroom, the
concept of entrepreneurship cannot be taught and that the “concept of starting one’s own
business” does not require academic treatment. However, teaching entrepreneurship offers
advantage of avoiding those errors and misjudgments made by individuals who ventured before.
9
The academic propositions in teaching business to young people also apply in the teaching of
entrepreneurship. The number of businesses created and the economic impact of
entrepreneurship courses and programs at Stanford, MIT, University of Texas-Austin and other
leading universities is testimony to the fact that entrepreneurship skills and know-how can be
taught and entrepreneurs can be nurtured through supporting programs in university-based
incubators, entrepreneur associations and local business networks.
10, 11, 12, 13
Important Factors Impacting New Venture Creation
Benjamin Mokry
14
suggests that in order to create a more receptive environment for
entrepreneurship, a number of fundamental societal changes must occur. He supports the major
truism that “local communities are the breeding ground of entrepreneurship” and are capable of
creating environments favorable to it. Mokry has emphasized two factors that affect
entrepreneurial success: 1) Existence of an entrepreneurial sub-culture. The tremendous success
of Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin and San Diego very much support the notion that entrepreneurs
feed off each other in a synergistic fashion and create their own dynamic environment. 2)
Incubators and Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs), many of which are initiated by local
universities/governments as enterprise centers.
Recent studies have developed a more positive awareness of educating people in
entrepreneurship and eventually how to become entrepreneurial. It has been determined that 1)
potential entrepreneurs can be encouraged through university-based entrepreneurship programs
2) entrepreneurship within an established definition can be taught and 3) entrepreneurial alumni
do succeed and they themselves provide further insights and educational materials for
dissemination in the classroom.
15,16, 17
Studies by Wolfe, Adkins and Sherman,
18
have shown that
universities serve as sources of new technologies that might be commercialized by incubator
client firms and other regional start-ups. Universities can also provide other valuable services
and unique resources to both the incubator, its clients and other regional start-ups such as (1)
Faculty / technologist managerial or technical consulting on a pro bono or fee basis (2) Student
interns and employees (3) Access to technical labs, facilities and equipment (4) Access to
databases and researchers (5) Access to research and development financing through programs
such as SBIR – federal grant funding is greatly enhanced when incubator clients submit a joint
proposal with a university or federal laboratory (6) Additional services and resources including
patent knowledge, alumni who may act as advisors, business contacts and strategic alliance
facilitators or investors, access to a far-flung network of laboratories and technical expertise, and
access to investment by university foundations.
All the above mentioned research findings and other issues and environmental factors were
considered when designing the engineering entrepreneurship programs at Florida Tech.
Additionally, leading entrepreneurship programs in the country were benchmarked and the best
practices were adopted.
19, 20, 21, 22, 23
Why Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship?
Henry Ford can be considered a pioneer in the field of Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship. In
1902, the initial investors forced Henry Ford out of the Henry Ford Company they had
established to manufacture the car that Henry had designed. They wanted to manufacture small
quantities of expensive cars for the upper echelons of society. They re-christened the company
the Cadillac Automobile Company and went on to modest success. Henry started the Ford Motor
Company and designed and manufactured the Model T for the masses using systems engineering
principles of proactive product standardization, quality, manufacturability, mass marketability,
etc and with its resounding success, he changed the auto industry and the American lifestyle.
24
Traditionally, engineers in the various disciplines have been trained to solve explicit problems,
such as finding the solutions of n-equations with n-unknowns. In such problems all the required
information is provided, and the solution requires the application of a specific strategy that will
work for all problems of a given type. Unfortunately, the nature of the 21
st
century economy
means that the types of problems that engineers have to solve tend to be more implicit in form.
All the information required for the solution is available, but it is fragmented, dispersed and
requires highly developed perception skills to extract and use successfully. Traditionally, in large
corporations, high levels of creativity and innovative idea generation have not been seen as
central to the engineer’s role. However, to compete in a changing marketplace fraught with
rapidly changing technology, shorter product life-cycles, downsizing and outsourcing, engineers
need to re-invent themselves as independent and entrepreneurial and market their creativity.
25
In
many large corporations, entrepreneurially thinking engineers have been observed to show more
entrepreneurial initiative and a higher level of productivity, efficiency and cost-consciousness. It
is a known fact that engineers who manage their engineering careers as entrepreneurs from the
start enjoy a higher probability of advancing within the company.
26
The Systems Engineering
and Engineering Management degree programs at Florida Tech broaden the typical engineer’s
perspectives considerably with the traditional well-rounded Engineering Management and
Systems Engineering course offerings, as well as complementary innovative courses in Technical
Marketing, High Tech Product Strategy, Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship and Technology
Commercialization Strategies to produce “The Engineer of 2020” as described by the National
Academy of Engineering.
Despite the popularity of these engineering entrepreneurship-related courses, the word
“entrepreneur” is often misunderstood by engineers and some employers as it conjures visions of
larger than life empire-builders who create high risk business ventures that promise either
intoxicating wealth or wretched bankruptcy – and very little in between. Entrepreneurs seem to
thrive in chaotic and uncertain realms, far removed from the orderly and methodical world of
engineers, where calculations and data are applied to design solutions that eliminate uncertainty
and risk. Another misperception is that entrepreneurship courses belong to business schools and
are not engineering-related. However, the truth is that Engineering Principles parallel
Entrepreneurship Concepts. All employers are engaged in a business to produce a return on
investment. An engineer’s compensation package is an investment made by the company.
Whether one is a CEO in charge of a whole company or an engineer overseeing a single task or
project, he or she is responsible for producing a positive return on the investments they are
entrusted to. So all engineers engage in entrepreneurship – but only those who deliver the best
returns on the investment they manage will be in the best positions for advancement.
27,28
Taxonomy of Engineers, Promoters, Managers, Engineering Managers,Engineering
Entrepreneurs and Systems Engineering Entrepreneurs
(Adapted from: Jeffry Timmons’ New Venture Creation)
HIGH
Creativity
and
Innovation
LOW General Management Skills HIGH
* Typical graduates of Business Schools with BBA or MBA degrees
The taxonomy above illustrates the relative skills and characteristics of Engineers, Promoters,
Managers, Engineering Managers, Engineering Entrepreneurs and graduates of Systems
Engineering Programs. As a result of the interdisciplinary nature of the Engineering
Management program and his/her engineering education and experience, the typical Engineering
Management graduate is expected to have higher levels of Creativity and Innovation capabilities
than the typical Promoter and Management graduates of Business school BBA/MBA programs.
The Engineering Entrepreneur with a broad based entrepreneurially-oriented engineering
education rooted heavily in experiential entrepreneurship programs and activities is expected to
develop a higher level of skill sets in Creativity and Innovation as well as general management
skills, business know-how and networking skills. Armed with a cache of Systems Engineering
tool and techniques such as simulation, project engineering, systems integration, Technology
Function Deployment, customer requirement engineering, decision and risk analysis, etc that
make the entrepreneurial process more deterministic and after going through a broad based
entrepreneurially-oriented engineering education rooted heavily in experiential entrepreneurship
programs and activities, the Systems Engineering Entrepreneur graduates have demonstrated the
highest levels of creativity and innovation and general management skills, business know-how
and networking skills.
Engineering
Entrepreneur
Promoter*
Manager/
Administrator*
Engineer/
Inventor
Engineering
Manager
Systems
Engineering
Entrepreneur
A common complaint heard from most high tech entrepreneurs is that their entrepreneurial
projects always take more than 2X the time, the money and the resources than what they planned
for at the outset. The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course at Florida Tech is designed
to allay the above misperceptions, fears and complaints using proven Systems Engineering body
of knowledge in Project Engineering, Systems Integration, Decision and Risk Analysis,
Simulation, Systems Life-Cycle Costing, etc. It has been observed that some of the most
successful high tech and serial entrepreneurs have a systems engineering approach to their
entrepreneurial ventures. This is because of their broad perspective of the competitive
environment and a balanced, methodical and systematic approach to capitalize on the
opportunities to ensure sustained long term success. (See course description in the Appendix).
The influence of Systems Engineering (SE) thinking on entrepreneurship has often been
overlooked in business-school based technological entrepreneurship programs. The innovation
process is significantly improved and made more robust by adopting a SE mindset early in the
timeline. If SE concepts that work so well in engineering are applied to the innovation process,
the quality of the innovation and likelihood of success are improved by significant orders of
magnitude. For example potential investors will look more favorably on a product concept that
has a lifecycle design effort put into the initial model. This leads to a more mature product
development process that is less likely to run into development troubles. Therefore the investors
will see a more desirable opportunity and the entrepreneur significantly improves the probability
of entrepreneurial success.
Goals of the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Program:
The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Program has 5 major goals:
1. Provide a unique, systems engineering – based encouraging environment for engineers to ease
into careers in entrepreneurship and create investable, start-up, technology-based ventures that
will create jobs and function as sustainable, revenue generating high tech companies on the
Space Coast.
2. Experience the process of engineering entrepreneurship from a Systems Engineering
perspective – by identifying and pursuing a business opportunity for a technology / product with
a team of motivated peers and entrepreneur support groups from the community – even if they
decide not to pursue entrepreneurial careers eventually, this experience will make them more
effective entrepreneurs in their organizations
3. Using a Systems Engineering approach, systematically learn how to structure and develop a
business that is attractive to investors and develop products that are popular with customers.
4. Use System Engineering principles and techniques to analyze and alleviate the problems
encountered in starting up a technology-based venture with very high degrees of technical and
market uncertainties
5. Meet practicing professionals and learn from the experiences of seasoned entrepreneurs,
investors and business service providers to get feedback and valuable insights from professionals
and acquire practical knowledge and tools
4-Course Florida Tech Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Program
The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course series and program consists of one new
course module in Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship that is dove-tailed into three existing
course modules in Technical Marketing, High Tech Product Strategy and Technology
Commercialization Strategies.
Module 1: Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship - this module is a comprehensive overview
of Systems Engineering Principles as applied to Engineering Entrepreneurship and the students
will start integrating the various components to develop their business plan. The risks, rewards
and challenges of entrepreneurship, and the system-engineering-based strategies and tactics to
increase the chances of success are systematically covered in this module. Each session of this
module consists of (1) a lecture and case study based on system engineering principles that
parallel an entrepreneurship concept and step and (2) experiential guest lecture/seminar by
industry expert or entrepreneur on entrepreneurial opportunities in emerging fields.
Module 2: Technical Marketing - This module gives the engineers a strong marketing
orientation and shape their innovative high tech idea into the right product for the right
customer, to further increase the chances of market success. This is very critical for engineers to
develop paradigm pliancy and think in terms of the Whole Product, not just their generic
technologies or products.
Module 3: High Tech Product Strategy - This state-of-the-art course module addresses the
formulation of specific high tech product strategies to increase the probability of market success.
These include Product Platform and Product Line Strategies; Differentiation and Price-based
Competitive Strategies; Support Strategies based on Time, Cannibalization, and Global Product
Development and Growth Strategies based on Innovation, Expansion ad Strategic Alliances.
Module 4: Technology Commercialization Strategies - This state-of the-art course is designed
to develop the students' ability to apply the engineering and entrepreneurial processes to
Technology Commercialization. This innovative, overview course will systematically cover the
Technical, Marketing and Business aspects of the Technology Commercialization process in 18
steps through the 3 phases (Concept, Development and Commercial) and six stages
(Investigation, Feasibility, Development, Introduction, Growth and maturity)
The Final Business Plan: Final Business Plan Write up and Presentation. As part of the
proposed certificate requirement, the students would be required to write up a professional
business plan and present it to the NASA / UCF Incubators and Technology Development /
Commercialization Offices and also to Central Florida Investment Corporation and other
interested VCs. Teams of two or three students will work on the development of the business
plan to market an innovative new product or commercialize a promising technology, throughout
the four-course program.
This first-of-a-kind, pioneering course and holistic program address the formulation of specific
strategies to significantly increase the probability of market and technical success.
Entrepreneurship concepts and strategies developed empirically from the experiences of high-
tech companies are applied. These are more practical than theoretical and are intended to push
systems engineering entrepreneurship to the cutting-edge. Through the incisive insights of
leading systems engineering experts, entrepreneurs, numerous examples, and case studies /
interactive discussions simulating the experiences of technical entrepreneurs, this comprehensive
course series systematically covers almost all the issues aspiring technical entrepreneurs should
consider in developing their new ventures., including funding, intellectual property, project
management, timing, technological change, globalization, product positioning, and contingency
planning, as well as marketing and financial considerations. Class sessions focus on the systems
engineering principles and issues which must be faced in starting a new venture and the options
which are available to the technical entrepreneur. Particular emphasis is placed on rigorous
assessment of the technical and business merits of selected innovations through individual and
group projects. VC and Angel-investor developed criteria is taken into consideration when
selecting recipients for funds. Participation in other entrepreneur networking activities on
campus and in the community is kept track of, encouraged and rewarded.
The “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” Experiential Seminar Series
The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course series is complemented by another pioneering
innovation in experiential entrepreneurship at Florida Tech – The “Engineering Entrepreneur in
Spotlight” seminar series. In these seminars typically held twice a month, struggling/successful
local technical entrepreneurs visit the class and present their business plan for critique and
recommendations by the class. Once a month, these “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight”
seminars are open to the public. Over the past three years, these seminars which have got wide
pre- and post-event publicity in the local media, and have become an increasingly important
networking forum for entrepreneurs, inventors investors, business service providers, students and
faculty. As a result of these seminars a number of local business deals and alliances in high tech
entrepreneurship have been consummated and Florida Tech students have secured career-
enhancing opportunities with established and start-up companies as interns, co-op students, or
permanent positions as founders, advisors or technical experts.
Conclusions
The initial impact of the nascent Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship program and
experiential Entrepreneurship activities at Florida Tech has been remarkable.
Elements of the pioneering Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course have been prototyped
and tested in various formats such as seminars, short courses and as entrepreneurial topics in
Systems Engineering courses. The Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship Course has got
“excellent” reviews and student feedback in the first semester that it was offered.
The “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” seminar series featuring local entrepreneurs,
innovators, inventors and, their research collaborators and entrepreneur networking / service
providers such as Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center (FNBIC), Space Applications
Technology Outreach program (SATOP), Technology Research and Development Authority of
the State of Florida (TRDA), the Alumni Entrepreneur Alliance, The Space Coast EDC and other
local organizations, have seen increasing attendance and have become an increasingly important
networking and discussion forum for local entrepreneurs, inventors, business service providers,
investors, students and faculty.
Two NCIIA grants, totaling about $40K for Florida Tech have been central to the rapid increase
in entrepreneurial participation by undergraduates in the College of Engineering. One of the
grants funded entrepreneurial multi-university wireless senior design projects, while the other
supported a series of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department senior design teams with
entrepreneurial commitment. Additionally, Florida Tech has been an active partner of the NSF-
funded Partnership for Innovation - Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology
Commercialization (CENTECOM) along with UCF, USF and Florida A&M University. The
response to these grants has been extremely positive, with 7 of 13 entrepreneurial senior design
teams in 2005 intending to launch businesses around their senior projects. Additionally, there
were twelve graduate E-teams presenting their business ideas at the Engineering
Entrepreneurship Business Idea Pitching competition. In 2005, Florida Tech was awarded a
Advanced E-Team Grant for an innovative student project, emanating from the “Florida Tech
Senior Design Project Commercialization and Entrepreneurship Program” which includes
courses from the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course series.
33,34
A contagious culture of engineering entrepreneurship and high degree of entrepreneurial
awareness has been created on campus and in the Space Coast community. Two Florida Tech
Student Entrepreneurs Clubs have been formed, affiliated to C-E-O (Collegiate Entrepreneur
Organization) and SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) respectively, with weekly meetings and a
range of experiential activities. Some of the community-wide forums organized by the campus-
based High Tech Business Accelerator such as the 4-session Intellectual Property workshop, the
alumni entrepreneur panel discussion have seen record attendance from faculty, students and the
Space Coast community. The SBIR workshops conducted by the Florida-NASA Business
Incubation Center and the Space Coast EDC drew entrepreneurs and inventors from North, South
and West Florida to the Space Coast. The NCIIA “Invention to Venture” workshop held in
Orlando saw an exponential increase in attendees from the Space Coast. These activities have got
considerable local media publicity.
With the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship course and program enabling aspiring and
struggling engineers-turned-entrepreneurs for higher degrees of entrepreneurial success with a
deterministic approach (rather than a stochastic approach) it is anticipated that the locus of high
tech entrepreneurship education will move from business schools to engineering schools.
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APPENDIX
Module 1: Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship
Course Overview:
This is a very resourceful course for skilled engineers and managers with creative product ideas,
but limited knowledge of how to actually start building a company around the ideas. This
cutting-edge course features Systems Engineering – based practical insights, tools, objectives,
strategies and actions that one can apply to any stage of an entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial
venture from initial idea to growth and profitability. The critical roles of marketing, finance and
management are clearly explained as the entrepreneur learns practical and leading-edge system
engineering approaches such as requirements engineering, project engineering, decision and risk
analysis, systems modeling, systems integration, and system launch and quality engineering to
bring products to market and grow the organization. Experiential guest lectures from industry
experts and entrepreneurs on emerging technology trends, roadmaps, and standards processes,
and interaction / networking opportunities with successful or struggling technical entrepreneurs,
corporate intrapreneurs, venture capitalists, technology incubator directors, attorneys, financial
advisors, consultants, etc. will be an added feature of this course.
Course Objectives:
1. Develop an entrepreneurial idea into a commercially viable product line or business
2. Using a Systems Engineering based approach, solve the critical issues involved in
product development, marketing and funding an entrepreneurial product from conception
to profitable growth
3. Use Systems Engineering principles to develop multiple business operating structures for
implementing efficient, long-range coordination, command and control
4. Apply high standards of company-wide quality engineering, project management, risk
analysis
5. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the trends, roadmaps and standards processes
of emerging technologies
6. Write a solid business plan/NCIIA E-Team proposal that attracts funding and keeps the
entrepreneurial business on course
Course Outline: Key: GL=Guest Lecture; EOpps=Entrepreneurial Opportunities
1. Systems Engineering and Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: Self Analysis and Strategic Visioneering
2. Requirements Engineering for Technical Entrepreneurs – Understanding Customer/Market Needs
GL: EOpps through Technology Roadmaps / Standards Processes
3. Competitive Analysis for Engineering Entrepreneurs – Understanding the Competitive
Environment and Protecting IP
GL: EOpps in Software Systems Engineering
4. Business Systems Modeling for Engineering Entrepreneurship – Understanding the Basics of
Accounting and Entrepreneurial Finance
GL: EOpps in Optics Engineering
5. Product Development Process for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Product Development and Improvement
6. Project Engineering for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Civil Engineering
7. Decision and Risk Analysis for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Engineering Consulting
8. Systems Integration for Engineering Entrepreneurship – The Business Plan
GL: EOpps in Wireless Systems Engineering
9. Team Dynamics and Performance Assessment for Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Materials Engineering
10. System Launch Consideration for Engineering Entrepreneurs – Integrating Marketing/Sales
GL: EOpps in Hydrogen Economy
11. Quality Engineering Consideration for Sustainable Engineering Entrepreneurship
GL: EOpps in Systems Integration
12. Presentation of Final Business Plans or SBIR/STTR Proposals
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