Technology-based Entrepreneurship Research Articles

Engineering Entrepreneurship: An Example of A Paradigm Shift in Engineering Education

AbstractThis paper describes a course on technology‐based entrepreneurship. Brown University's Division of Engineering has created a two‐semester course sequence designed to introduce students to entrepreneurship through a unique merger of classroom learning and industry participation. The course is open to advanced undergraduates from all engineering disciplines, and emphasis is placed upon recruiting almost half of the student participants from outside of engineering in order to develop “team building” skills. Local “parent companies” provide seed ideas or concepts to student groups who use skills learned in the classroom (both in this course as well as other courses) to develop and refine the parent company's idea and turn it into a viable simulated spin‐off business or new start‐up. Managers from the parent companies serve in an evolving role over the two‐semester sequence beginning as a “board of directors” for the spin‐off and eventually evolving into a potential source of start‐up capital (or possibly a customer for the products of the company). The faculty carefully manage the student‐company interface. Deliverables at the end of the two‐semester sequence include a business plan and a prototype product.

Has Germany Finally Fixed its High-Tech Problem? The Recent Boom in German Technology-Based Entrepreneurship

Since 1997, Germany has witnessed an unprecedented boom in high-tech start-ups and IPOs. Long considered a desert for high tech and entrepreneurship alike, Germany has witnessed a spectacular mushrooming of technology-based firm foundings in the past three years, transforming the country from a laggard to the clear leader in European high-tech entrepreneurship. Though seeming to come from nowhere and confounding the conventional wisdom about Germany's strengths and weaknesses, the take-off in German high-tech did not come overnight, but instead capped a good three decades of trial-and-error in high-tech sponsorship policies. This article puts the current high-tech boom into perspective by retracing the historical evolution of Germany's technology policies.

Nurturing and Sustaining Entrepreneurship

This article is the second of two dedicated to the nature and scope of university–industry interaction in Australia. The first article, published in the October 1999 issue of Industry and Higher Education, was concerned with overall strategies, policies and instruments facilitating innovation and technology-based entrepreneurship, especially through the development of science and technology parks (STPs). STPs continue to remain the focus of this article as it is based on the findings of the same study mission to Australia that informed the first article. However, specific attention is given here to the features of particular university or science park based entrepreneurial activities, especially as they serve to promote innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises located on the STPs. While the descriptive scope of the article is general in nature, the objective is to examine individual schemes and projects that have been developed to foster better university–industry interaction, and SME growth and development, especially entrepreneurial good practice.