Newark, New Jersey
April 22, 2022
April 22, 2022
April 23, 2022
19
10.18260/1-2--40071
https://strategy.asee.org/40071
348
Cesar Bandera is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Leir Research Institute for Business, Technology, and Society in the Martin Tuchman School of Management of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research interests include entrepreneurship pedagogy and entrepreneurial ecosystems with a focus on healthcare and autonomous platforms. Bandera has also launched successful ventures in the m-Health industry. Bandera received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University at Buffalo, NY, with a specialization in biomimetics and active vision. He is recipient of the NASA Space Act award, Small Business of the Year Nominations from the United States Department of Defense, NIH Small Business Innovation Research Success Story designation, and four patents. He has also authored book chapters and publications in research journals including the Journal of Small Business Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Electronic Commerce Research, and BMC Public Health. Bandera is Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, Guest Editor of the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and NJIT Master Teacher. He has served on the board of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and as Director of the Academy of the International Council for Small Business.
As entrepreneurship educators, we often recommend that students “stay in their wheelhouse” and exploit their tacit knowledge during opportunity discovery and business model validation. We also hope that some of these nascent entrepreneurs will someday make an impact on the major crises affecting society including healthcare disparity and clean energy. Students are aware of these crises and that daunting challenges require even more resources outside their grasp, but few have the tacit knowledge on how to address them through entrepreneurship. How then can we prepare students to be entrepreneurs that make societal impact, or even convince them that this can be a viable future endeavor?
We present a one-semester entrepreneurship course that, building on three pillars, teaches undergraduate students how to pursue societally significant opportunities. The first pillar is the distinction between tacit and codified knowledge as drivers of entrepreneurship. The second pillar is metacognition to broaden students’ notion of “wheelhouse.” The third pillar is the protocol of the federal Small Business Innovation Research program (“America’s Seed Fund”). While the traditional context of these pillars is technology innovation, the course emphasizes the multidisciplinary collaboration required by societally significant solutions, and is attended by students from diverse disciplines. The course also exercises skills required to achieve such solutions, including forming strategic partnerships, navigating funding protocols, and grantsmanship. These skills are of value not only to future entrepreneurship, but also to societally significant careers in the corporate, academic, and public service settings.
Bandera, C., & Collins, R. S. (2022, April), Teaching Entrepreneurship with Societal Impact to Engineering Students Paper presented at 2022 Spring ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Conference, Newark, New Jersey. 10.18260/1-2--40071
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