Building Entrepreneurship across the University: Cross-Campus Collaboration between Business and Engineering

Abstract

Both Washington State University (WSU) and the state of Washington have a rich, entrepreneurial history. Seeking to capitalize on that strength, leaders at WSU sought to create cross-campus partnerships in the hopes that they could better educate and train tomorrow's entrepreneurial leaders. Perhaps the best operationalization of that vision is the Frank Institute, a partnership between the business school's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the College of Engineering and Architecture's Harold Frank Engineering Entrepreneurship Institute. The Frank Institute selects 12 promising business and engineering students each year to undertake an invigorating yearlong program designed to teach the students how to launch new technology ventures. Now going into its fifth instantiation, the Frank program has enabled students, faculty, and university leaders to learn a great deal about the benefits of multidisciplinary teaching of technology entrepreneurship. In this case study, we discuss how cross-campus collaborative efforts at WSU were achieved, how the award winning Frank Fellows program operates, and some lessons learned from the success and challenges with this approach to cross-campus collaboration in entrepreneurship education.