Providing engineers with complementary skills for entrepreneurship

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Rosa Crawford
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1 Providing engineers with complementary skills for entrepreneurship Director and co-founder Innovation without entrepreneurship is like a car without a driver Isenberg, 2012

2 Outline Today is increased consensus that if need entrepreneurial individuals then a preferred pedagogy needs to be progressive, i.e. learner centered, interdisciplinary, process-based, co-creation oriented, experiential and socially situated. However, there is a considerable gap between preferred and applied pedagogy. Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship has become a role model as regard how progressive and action-based entrepreneurship education can become. What is possible to achieve through such a MSc venture creation program? What is entrepreneurship and how can it be spread throughout engineering education? Should progressive (bottom-up) and traditional (top-down) pedagogy be integrated, and if so how?

3 Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship is built on Chalmers history withing entrepreneurship Chalmers university spin-off rate per employee was only slightly lower than at MIT and ten times higher than Stanford (McQueen and Wallmark, 1982). However, in the comparison, Chalmers spin-offs on average had fewer employees and thus less growth. William Chalmers Carl Palmstedt Gustaf Dalén

4 Why the school started in 1997: To develop entrepreneurial competencies Value for bridging the Valley of Death Business? Research Time

5 Examples Inventions being realized thanks to our school From Chalmers Technical textiles division From Saab Fighter Jet division

6 150 Ideas evaluated From idea to reality every year Companies Universities 12 Projects 5-6 Incorporations Inventors Developing entrepreneurial competence is the key objective Through the school has developed a tech transfer/incubator to achieve this objective while also becoming the leading Swedish start-up environment

7 Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship 16 years 54 ventures 27% of Sweden s incubated tech venture revenue Our student surrogate entrepreneur model: Not only works it s the leading model in Sweden!

8 From Ollila and Williams Middleton, 2011

9 More than half of the world s identified venture creation programs met in 2012* * VCP NETWORK Forum at Chalmers June 12-13, 2012

10 Entrepreneurship is when you act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural or [and] social. (Young Enterprise Denmark,

11 (Adapted from Lackeus, Lundqvist and Williams Middleton, 2013) Activities that make people entrepreneurial Venture creation (social / startup / corporate) Value creation (real-life value to external stakeholders) Creation (human, physical, cultural, social and economic)

12 (Adapted from Lackeus, Lundqvist and Williams Middleton, 2013) Activities that make people entrepreneurial Entrepreneurship as a method Wide definitions of entrepreneurship Narrow definitions of entrepreneurship Venture creation (startup, social and corporate) Value creation (real-life value to external stakeholders) Creation (human, physical, cultural, social and economic)

13 How should universities work with these entrepreneurial activities? Much today is extra-curricular Should it remain that way or should the progressive bottom-up extra-curricular activities replace what is today top-down traditional pedagogy? No! Bottom-up and top-down mechanisms can be mutually reinforcing and should be integrated

14 How we integrate top-down and bottom-up Traditional top-down mechanism that include bottom-up activities Thesis work Description Solve the technical/market/innovation-oriented challenges that students pursue Written course exams Assignments In exam question, ask students to relate assignment-work (with more or less real innovation cases) to relevant literature and lecture discussions. Bottom-up assignment are normally graded with feedback and feedback sessions based upon predetermined criteria.

15 An example of entrepreneurial activity linked to an elective course with participants from 11 engineering programs Team Chalmers: Winner of Formula Student 2012

16 Conclusions Venture Creation Programs with student surrogate entrepreneurs have a huge potential in increasing sustainable innovation in society However, the entrepreneurial activities of creation, value creation and venture creation can be broadly implemented in the engineering curriculum Bottom-up and top-down mechanisms are mutually reinforcing so bring in the entrepreneurial activities into the curriculum! Thank you! mats.lundqvist@chalmers.se

Putting entrepreneurship in the driver s seat. mats.lundqvist@chalmers.se Professor and co-founder of school

Putting entrepreneurship in the driver s seat mats.lundqvist@chalmers.se Professor and co-founder of school Chalmers history of Entrepreneurship William Chalmers Carl Palmstedt Gustaf Dalén Chalmers university