Gary Hansen (UCSB) & Kenneth Pickar (Caltech) Slide Presentation How did we get here? B-schools had a major re-design in the 50s-70s • Academic institutions are not the most flexible organizations • B-schools often do work on the side (i.e. centers, etc.) • Engineering schools are very well designed, leaving little room for flexibility • Where does entrepreneurship fit into this??? • Opportunity New jobs created in tech driven businesses • Larger and smaller companies (UCSB small ones- Inogen- Oxygen, Calient- Fiber • optical switching, Indigo Systems) You have to understand the technology to understand the alliances and business • opportunities The engineers don’t understand the business, MBAs don’t understand the • technology Blending the best of both (1) MBA strengths • o Teams, marketing, finance, contacts MBA weaknesses • o Discipline not function, Product development, tactics MBAs are applying models that don’t fit the technologies • Blending the best of both (2) Engineering strengths • o Problem solving and quant skills o Tech evolution over time o Creativity Eng. Weaknesses • o Business disciplines o Lack of interdisciplinary teams Business & Tech Education Depth & breadth of business and tech education (see matrix at the end) • Who is really good at tech and business skills? • Is that something companies value? Yes! • Who is supplying it? • o MIT and Stanford are good at both in their respective schools (engineering and business), but no school is really good at both. o Caltech, UCSB good at engineering, Berkeley and UCLA at business o Nobody gets both right in the same place at a university! o Where should schools be?
o Is the solution to get your undergrad in engineering at Stanford and then come back and get your MBA from Stanford several years later? o How do you play in that one area without having going through 4-5 years of undergrad and then 2 years of an MBA? o Can we do this all in one program at one time? o What about joint programs that allow students to work across departments while pursuing a degree (or even multiple degrees simultaneously)? o Let me pose the challenge whether formal academic programs should cover that? Or whether this should be a life pursuit rather than something you get in one degree? Current solutions Business courses for engineers • o Tech ventures, Entrepreneurial Marketing, Entrepreneurial Finance, business basics, etc. Tech management courses for MBAs • o IP, tech ventures, new product development (most of these are new) Alliance programs – MBAs and engineers • o Tech management certificate Question? Are there some courses that don’t exist yet that would really blend these worlds? • o New product development o Engineering management Challenge (get into 5 teams to work on this) Design one course that could be offered by an eng. school that teaches state of the • art business concepts o Target customers- senior undergrads or grads prior to engaging in an entrepreneurial career. o Project or program manager or new product manager in a tech driven firm o How do we teach the things about business that engineers know the very least about? o UCSB is a good example- there is no business school, there is an economics program, and a great engineering school. How can we design a course to do this? o How does the person who is the 10-10 get there? What is their behavior look like?
Breakout Session Team 1 (Mary Beth from ??) Objective: to teach basic business skills to engineering and science students to • function as pros. Course topics: • o Accounting! o Marketing o Finance o Sales & customers o Biz models o IP o Leadership o HR o Operations/project management o Product viability Methods: (food, beer, pizza) • o Case studeies o Projects: biz plans, biz simulation o Role playing o Consulting projects ß Within university ß Outside university o Speakers o Internships – part of a course? o Field trips – manufacturing facility, workplace, incubators o Food! o Lectures Team 2 (Eric Suuberg from Brown) What are the biggest gaps? • o IP o Marketing o Team experience o Managing people Ideas • o Simulation (tech-based spin off) o Biz plan: concept to commercialization o Touch functional bases- need of diversity o Spiral/iterate up to o Strategic planning Combo of classroom & experiential • 2 semester “capstone” course given by a company and their mentors, present • to the company Integrate field experience • Do you know what the largest background of CEOs is? •
o Marketing and sales- and the VCs know this Team 3 (Renee Rother from Stanford) We didn’t think 10/10 was really possible • Entrepreneurs? • Loose cannon • Creativity • Dreams • Comfort with ambiguity • o Engineers are not comfortable with this What’s the ideal outcome? • o Knowledge (strategy? Process?) o Skills (tactics) o Attitudes/behaviors/mindset (Canada has a co-op program) o MBA mindset vs. sci/eng mindset o Other? Productization 101 • o How much X is enough? (X = R&D, market research) o Need to know what they don’t know and be able to express that (how do you ask for help). o How do you get it to market? o Biz appreciation (finance, pricing, strategy, IP, sales, marketing) o What problems do you need to prepare for or avoid? Corporate citizenship, ethics, conflict management • Employees/unions, negotiation, social awareness • Team 4 (Kristina Holly from MIT Entrepreneurial Center) Content (assume entrepreneurship focus) • o Fuzzy front-end due diligence o Opportunity assessment ( o product yet) o IP protection and licensing o Intro fundamentals (marketing, finance, accounting) ß Include simple terminology (e.g. what is an angel investor?) Pedagogy – ideas • o Simulation – start with it, very limited time o Write business plan o Real startups o Look at failures (can learn a lot more from them)- use guest speakers, case studies, student writes case study o Team exercises and communication Summary • o Start with bootcamp- short and intense ß Fundaments ß Mini MBA core ß w/simulations
o _ & _ lecture & case special topics o Case => failure analysis Session Conclusions Can you get all this in one course, or does it have to be more? • Students work relative to how challenging the courses are and that we need to • make sure us stuff is exciting and pushes them. What makes a successful entrepreneur in the marketplace? And then we should • work backwards from that. Two course sequence- mini-MBA then entrepreneurship, or do you try to hook • them the other way around? There is really too much to do in one class • Two things were valuable for me • o How do you search? How do you learn new stuff? o Analyzing failures- students want to hear about the failures from our guest lectures.
Figure 1- Business Technology Education Depth and Breadth of Business (1-10 scale) Technology Education Depth and Breadth (1-10 scale)
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