Teaching Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in Engineering*

ERIC L. WANG
Mechanical Engineering Department University of Nevada, Reno continued to provide the financial support required to teach our capstone course. Concerned with the decline in the United States industrial productivity (e.g. as described by Dertouzos et al.),3 Jerome Lemelson also developed his E-Team concept, where the E denotes both Excellence and Entrepreneurship. In his interview for the Inventors series on the Discovery Channel, he stated: What I consider to be one of my best innovations . . . an E-Team is a group of students who train to go into business and develop products that can be produced in the future while at school. E-Teams are development teams that consist primarily of students from a wide variety of disciplines, including those outside engineering, along with both faculty and professional mentors. These small interdisciplinary teams are charged with rapidly developing new technologies and products. One reason for the recent interest in the E-Team approach is that funds are being made available from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), a separate Lemelson Foundation program. Both Orthlieb4 (Swarthmore College) and Weilerstein5 (NCIIA) present good overviews of the NCIIA grant program and its goals. Hampshire College was the host institution for the establishment of the NCIIA. UNR served as both a charter member of the NCIIA and a role model for the E-Team concept. Since 1994, the multidisciplinary E-Team concept has been adopted at a variety of institutions. Lehigh University has created a unique set of degree programs centered around the E-Team concept. With strong funding from both private and federal sources, the programs involve the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Economics, and Arts and Architecture.6 At the University of Virginia, E-Teams also consist of a variety of majors from across the campus and begin by studying the methods used by successful inventors. By the end of Virginias Invention and Design course students are expected to draft a patent on their invention.7, 8 At Swarthmore College the E-Team concept has been implemented in both an elective solar energy class and as senior design projects.4 At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute engineering students can take an elective inventors studio course to develop either new fundable proposals or improve on previous projects that were funded by the NCIIA. The Illinois Institute of Technologys invention center places E-Teams in a studio environment modeled after traditional art studios. Students work as apprentices in a shared space to develop and build prototypes, write patents, and develop business plans.8 Similarly, Rowan University has also embraced the ETeam concept within their eight-semester Engineering Clinic framework.9 While most of the student projects originate and are funded by local industry and faculty, junior and senior-level students can develop their own ideas and compete for venture capital funds.10 Journal of Engineering Education 565

JOHN A. KLEPPE
Electrical Engineering Department University of Nevada, Reno

ABSTRACT
A special capstone course for senior electrical and mechanical engineering students has been developed at the University of Nevada, Reno. The class also includes MBA students from the College of Business Administration. All phases of new product development including innovation, patent law, product liability, business, sales, marketing and venture capital are covered. This paper presents a brief description of the course and the assessment results. The assessment results indicate that the learning objectives are being met and that students strongly feel that invention and entrepreneurship should be part of the engineering curriculum.

I. INTRODUCTION
Whether or not entrepreneurship has a place in engineering education is currently a topic of debate. Despite this uncertainty, many institutions have developed courses aimed at teaching entrepreneurship to engineering students. For the faculty at these institutions, the question then becomes, How do we teach invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship? At the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship have been part of an Electrical Engineering capstone course since the early 1980s.1, 2 The existing senior capstone class was reformed to include the elements of new product design including invention, innovation, patent law, product liability, marketing, sales, distribution, and finance. The students were separated into small companies that competed for grade points during the product development process. The company that ended up with the most points earned the best grade. In 1994 the late Jerome Lemelson, one of Americas most prolific inventors, provided the initial funds to establish the Lemelson Center for Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (LCIIE) at the University of Nevada, Reno. Since that time, the LCIIE has
*Based on Teaching Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in Engineering by Eric L. Wang and John A. Kleppe, which appeared in the Proceedings of the 2001 Annual Meeting of the NCIIA, Washington, DC, 69 March 2001, pp. 107 through 117, 2001.

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In 1996, the E-Team concept was added to the Mechanical Engineering capstone design course at UNR and since 1998 the Departments of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering have participated jointly in an E-Team entrepreneurship program.11 As part of this program, a multidisciplinary senior-level capstone undergraduate course (MECH 452/EE 491) is taken by all mechanical and electrical engineering undergraduates. In addition to the engineering students, MBA students enrolled in an independent study course (BADM 793) also participate in the capstone design course. This paper presents a brief description of this unique capstone course and discusses the assessment made during the past few offerings.

ficity of material vary widely depending on the guest lecturer. The lectures cover areas including: patent law, financial records, venture capital, small business innovation research (SBIR), product liability, ethics, product development, creative thinking, invention, and starting your own company. Via this heuristic approach of providing students with a broad experience of relevant lectures, it is hoped that the students will infer what innovation and entrepreneurship is all about. C. Grading Student work is assessed during the semester in three ways: faculty assessment, industrial assessment, and student peer assessment. Evaluating teams relative to one another is difficult because each project is different and, more often than not, the place within the development cycle is different among teams. Thus, the grading criteria are largely performance based, with the team's own project proposal serving as the benchmark. In this course we assign the team an average grade based on the work submitted as a team. E-Teams are awarded points for their oral and written reports. Each presentation and report is graded by at least two faculty members. The points earned are treated as currency, which can be traded between teams for services rendered and/or parts.11, 12 Because of the unique nature of the guest lecture series, attendance constitutes approximately 30 percent of the grade points. When one team member misses a lecture, the entire team is penalized. It is up to the team to inform the member who missed the lecture as to the content and main points made by the guest lecturer. The faculty provide oral examinations for students who missed lectures as a chance to earn back team attendance points. Finally, a panel of practicing engineers judges all student projects. At the end of the semester, the final presentation is given to four to five representatives of ASME and IEEE. The student projects are judged based on both the engineering and business content. The grade received by each team member can be either higher or lower than the team average depending on individual contribution. The average, however, must always remain the same. The two major determinants of individual contribution are peer evaluations and class attendance. Several standard peer evaluation forms are made available to all teams. In addition to affecting the entire team's grade, an individual's attendance record is also used by the faculty a measure of individual contribution.

II. COURSE DESCRIPTION

A. Course Overview Both EE 491 and MECH 452 are four-credit capstone courses offered once per year during the spring semester and traditionally have enrollments of approximately 2535 students each. Approximately 35 MBA students participate each semester. The combined course is team taught by the authors. Since EE491 and MECH 452 were combined in 1998, approximately 170 students have participated on E-Teams. Additional information on EE 491/MECH 452, along with recent project descriptions, can be found in other papers.11, 12 Each E-Team consists of four to six engineering students. Additionally, an MBA student may join an E-Team by selecting one E-Team, based on the perceived merit of the project and positive team dynamics. The role of the MBA student is to help develop a business plan with the E-Team. Business plans that are developed by engineering students typically look like a technical document, whereas the E-Teams that have an MBA student develop more of a sales document. In the end, each E-Team is charged with the responsibility of generating product ideas, evaluating and selecting one of the ideas, developing a working prototype, and performing market and financial analyses to determine if the product could sustain an actual business. It is recognized that the vast majority of the students will not become entrepreneurs. Thus, despite the focus on invention and entrepreneurship, the main goal of the course is to produce engineers with a better understanding of the business world. We feel that by giving the students the hands-on experience of trying to develop marketable products, they will: 1. be more comfortable working on multidisciplinary teams, 2. gain an understanding about intellectual property and patents, 3. be able to develop a business plan, and 4. be able to communicate effectively to their peers, suppliers, and customers. The above four items constitute the major learning objectives for the course. B. Lectures Rather than having the faculty give lectures defining what entrepreneurship is, a more inductive teaching method is used.13 The course utilizes a series of two-dozen special guest lectures on innovation and entrepreneurship. Topics, lecture formats, and speci566 Journal of Engineering Education

III. E-TEAM PROJECTS

A. The Design Projects Project concepts can be generated by faculty, local industry, previous E-Teams, and students. Once a project has been selected, the students must then provide both an oral presentation and a written proposal, which is evaluated based on seven topics: significance of problem, objectives, development plan, related research, key personnel, facilities, and budget.2 If the proposal is rejected, the E-Team must either resubmit a revised proposal or select another project and submit a new proposal. Due to the time constraints imposed by the course, the rejection of a proposal places additional pressure on an E-Team. Like a design review, constructive criticism is the main emphasis of the two progress reports. Understandably, the major difficulties October 2001

encountered are usually business related, such as market projections. Early in the semester the E-Teams typically tend to concentrate on the engineering aspects of a problem and lose sight of the overall goal (deliver a marketable product on time). The course culminates with final written report/presentation and a student trade show. The written report must include a description of both of the engineering and the business research that went into the development of the prototype product. All E-Teams must produce a working prototype by the end of the semester. To ensure that they complete their project, a student trade show is held the last Friday of the semester. It is a major event attended by faculty; students families; university, business, and government representatives; local and national media; and others interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. B. Failure, Bankruptcy, and Layoffs If a team cannot complete the project selected, due either to engineering, business, or personality problems, the E-Team can declare bankruptcy. In the event of a bankruptcy, all points earned by the E-Team are lost and each individual member of the E-Team is faced with the choice of either interviewing with other E-Teams or retaking the course next year. E-Teams can also choose to layoff a team member for unsatisfactory performance or behavior. A student who has been fired must either interview with other E-Teams or retake the course next year. The course faculty always mediate any bankruptcy or personality/performance conflicts before any action is taken, which usually results in an amicable agreement being reached.Working on a failing project or being fired is rarely treated as a negative outcome. It is emphasized to students that products fail, not people. Oftentimes products and/or projects fail due in no part to the engineering. C. Intellectual Property A fairly standard intellectual property policy exists for faculty and graduate research assistants students. However, for undergraduates the University maintains ownership of intellectual property only if a student uses significant resources other than normally accessed for instruction. Thus, at this institution, there is a significant potential for students to develop and retain all intellectual property. Students can also elect to assign the intellectual property to the University. In this event, if the University judges the idea valuable, the University incurs all the patent costs in exchange for royalties. The royalty amounts are negotiated on a per case basis.

IV. ASSESSMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Student learning has been assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. A recent poll of several hundred alumni of the course showed that alumni often find themselves in key positions in their workplace due to the additional knowledge they gained from the course. Several course alumni have returned as guest speakers to testify as to the importance of what is learned. Likewise, alumni of the College that did not have the course overwhelmingly support the course because they wish they had been as well prepared as our current graduates are. In an effort to determine if the learning objectives are being met, 228 undergraduate and 18 graduate students were given a 25October 2001

question entrepreneurship survey to complete (see Figure 1). Of these students 14 (six undergraduate/eight graduate) had taken EE 491/MECH 452 within the last year. Approximately 19 percent of respondents were self-identified as female. Table 1 presents specific demographics for each grade-level. Students who had completed the course more than one year ago were not included in the survey due to concerns of external influences. To analyze the data, unpaired t-tests were conducted for questions five to 20 to determine if the learning objectives had been achieved. The t-tests were also used to look for trends in the data based on groupings (questions one to four). The rankings were converted to numerical rankings for this analysis (VSA 1, VSD 6). Table 2 presents a summary of the results. The groups compared are listed in the first column and questions for which a statistically significant difference was detected (P 0.05) are listed in the second column. Differences with a P-value less than 0.001 are underlined. The first comparison (taken versus not taken course) is an indication as to whether the learning objectives had been met. Question 17 addresses our first learning objective and indicates that students who have taken our course feel more comfortable working on interdisciplinary teams than those that have not taken the course. The mean response for those that have taken the course was 4.6 (strongly disagree) and for those that have not taken the course the mean response was 3.9 (disagree). This difference was also evident at all grade levels except graduate students (comparisons four, five, six and seven in Table 2). Seniors and graduate students who had taken the class were included only in the taken class group. Questions 15 and 22 address the second learning objective and indicate that students who have taken our course feel they know more about patents and patent searches than students who have not taken the course. For both questions the mean responses was 2.4 (strongly agree) and 4.0 (disagree) for those that have taken and not taken the class respectively. Again, this difference was also evident at all grade levels except graduate students, who felt they knew as much about patents. Since the students had several lectures on intellectual property and were required to conduct a patent search as part of their project, this result was not too surprising. Interestingly, in regards to the third learning objective (be able to develop a business plan) we found no statistical difference (question 14). This indicates that students who have taken the course do not feel any more or less confident that they could write a business plan (mean 3.5). The grade-level comparisons indicated that only freshmen felt less confident in their ability than those that have taken the class (mean 3.7). Not surprisingly, the nine students who own their own business felt very strongly (mean 2.1) that they could write a business plan. An interview with students who had just completed the course helped to interpret this result. The students indicated that before the class they thought they could develop a business plan, but as they learned what really goes into one (as a result of the class), they felt less confident in their ability to draft an effective business plan. Our last major learning objective was addressed indirectly with question 18 (public speaking). While no difference was detected, the mean (3.2) indicates that all our students feel fairly comfortable giving presentations. However, those that own their own business did show a statistical difference (mean 2.1), indicating that they feel much more comfortable communicating verbally. Again, a post-course interview with students helped us interpret this result. The students indicated that communication, both within a team Journal of Engineering Education 567

Figure 1. Entrepreneurship survey used in this study.

and with suppliers, was a critical skill learned this class. Being able to decide what specific parts they needed, order the parts, have the correct parts delivered, and then incorporate them into their prototypesall within 90 dayswas found to be a difficult task that relied heavily upon communication skills. 568 Journal of Engineering Education

While we have always acknowledged that most of our students will not be entrepreneurs, it has always been our hope to plant a seed in their minds. To this end, it is interesting to examine several of the results that are not directly related to the learning objectives. October 2001

to the senior year (question 7). Students also lack interest in an MBA fairly uniformly regardless of year in school (question 23, mean 4.0). However, the students who have taken our course are more likely to entertain business school as an option (mean of 3.2). The latter result is very promising in that we are producing engineering students that want to gain more business skills, which reflects very positively on the impact our program.

Table 1. Demographics of survey respondents. Year is school was self-reported by students. The results to questions eight and nine indicated that all our students strongly agree that a knowledge entrepreneurship is important (mean 2.4) and that engineers usually are involved in business decisions (mean 2.4). Students strongly disagree (mean 4.7) that engineers dont need to know economics (question 11). Interestingly, for question 21 there was a significant difference between students who had and had not taken the class concerning working for a large company (means of 2.3 and 2.9 respectively). Evidently students who have taken the class are slightly more inclined to work for a large company. While it would appear that teaching invention, and entrepreneurship may actually reduce entrepreneurial intentions, interviews with students indicated that many of them realized, as a result of the course, that they needed additional skills and experience before launching their own ventures. Thus, they were more inclined to work for a large company, albeit only for a short time. The results also indicated that male students felt slightly more entrepreneurial than female students (question 5, means of 2.8 and 3.2 respectively) and were more comfortable investing in the stock market (question 10, means of 2.9 and 3.2). However, female students felt more realistic about the riches to be had at start-up companies (question 16, means of 4.2 and 3.8 for female and male respectively). These, along with other gender differences, are important when assigning students to E-Teams. Finally, the results indicate that freshmen begin with graduate school as future option, but that prospect declines as they progress

V. TOWARDS THE FUTURE

Beyond educating engineering students about invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship we hope to increase the innovative and entrepreneurial content in education by starting earlier in the education process. In the summer of 2000, a short course, based on this capstone course, was offered to 20 high school teachers. Two teachers commented: Teaching innovation in the schools calls for an innovative teacher. Unfortunately, teachers are groomed, and not by their collegiate education, to teach to the standards and do it through the text. Students are not benefiting from this in my opinion. I think that the concepts of invention and innovation are potential pathways to unlocking a students creative thinking skills.

V I. CONCLUSIONS
Based on the assessment results and our experience with this multidisciplinary course, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1. The students are meeting the learning objectives for the course. The data strongly indicates that they are learning in our course and not via an external source. 2. Students strongly believe that business and entrepreneurship should play an important role in engineering education. 3. It is extremely difficult for a student group to form and/or operate a business successfully without the long-term support of a mentor with extensive business experience.

(P

Table 2. Summary of t-test results. Survey questions for which statistically significant differences were detected between groups 0.05). Differences with P 0.001 are underlined.

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Journal of Engineering Education 569

4. Engineering students are more than capable of tackling the engineering aspects of the projects, but do not have the expertise to develop a business plan. In this sense, a mentor is an essential component of the E-Team. 5. The E-Team experience is worthwhile since students bring an entrepreneurial skill set to the workplace that greatly benefits most companies. 6. Graduates of the program feel the skills learned make them more effective program managers and leaders in their work environment. One high school teacher commented: The question is not, How can we use all of the information presented over the last three days within my classroom but, how can I not?

12. Wang, E.L., and J.A. Kleppe, How to Assess the Effectiveness of Engineering Programs in Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, ASEE, 2000, Session 1454. 13. Felder, R.M., Reaching the Second TierLearning and Teaching Style in College Science Education, Journal of College Science Teaching, vol. 23, no. 5, 1993, pp. 28629.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Funding for this project was provided by several grants from the Lemelson Center for Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (LCIIE); the Lemelson Education Assistance Program; the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA); and Washoe County School district.

REFERENCES
1. Kleppe, J.A., A Special Class for Senior Electrical Engineering Students on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Proceedings, 1986 Frontiers in Education Conference, IEEE, 1986, pp. 4146. 2. Kleppe, J.A., and M.S., Looney, A Special Class on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Proceedings, Babson CollegeKauffman Foundation Entrepreneurship Conference, Seattle, WA, 1996. 3. Dertouzos, M.L., R.K. Lester, and R.M. Solow, Made in America, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989. 4. Orthleib, F., Something for Everyone via NCIIA E-Team Development Projects, Proceedings, 1999 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, ASEE, 1999, Session 1625. 5. Weilerstein, P., Students as Innovators, Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 87, no. 1, 1998, p. 1. 6. Ochs, J.B., T.A. Waktins, and B.W. Boothe, Creating a Truly Multidisciplinary Entrepreneurial Educational Environment, Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, ASEE, 2001, Session 2554. 7. Gorman, M.E., L.G. Richards, W.T. Scherer, and J.K. Kagiwada, Teaching Invention and Design: Multidisciplinary Learning Modules, Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 84, no. 2, 1995, pp. 175186. 8. Weilerstein, P., F. Ruiz, and M. Gorman, The NCIIA: Turning Students into Inventors and Entrepreneurs, Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, ASEE, 1999, Session 2530. 9. Marchese, A.J., et al., Design in the Rowan University Freshmen Engineering Clinic, Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, ASEE, 1997, Session 3225. 10. Marchese, A.J., et al., The NCIIA Venture Capital Fund at Rowan University, Proceedings, ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, ASEE, 2000, Session 1454. 11. Kleppe, J.A., and E.L. Wang, An Experiment: Senior Level Engineering and MBA Students in an E-Team Experience, Proceedings, 2nd Annual NCIIA National Conference, NCIIA, 1998.

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