Instilling the entrepreneurial mindset by international development project work

Abstract

The entrepreneurial mindset has a number of attributes including curiosity about the world around you, discovery of opportunities, prototyping and vetting technology/business solutions and then executing on the venture. International development projects offer many possibilities to learn about an environment that students are not used to seeing and through observation, see opportunities for technology-based solutions to developing world problems. We have used this methodology for several senior design projects in the past and more recently have developed courses specifically to develop these attributes in electrical and computer engineering students. A two course sequence has been piloted for the first time this year. In the first course, taken by students in their junior year, the students are given the cultural context in a developing country (in particular, the present course's focus has been on Nicaragua). This topic is followed by a Spring break trip to Nicaragua and the students live out in rural communities to discover potential projects that have technical merit and offer potential business opportunities. The project proposals are then developed by students from a US university and a Nicaraguan university. In the second course, in parallel with the actual project design, the students take a business model development course to understand business models and how to produce them. They then use this knowledge to develop a business model for their particular projects. In the paper, details of the two courses will be presented along with student outcomes being measured in terms of how well the entrepreneurial mindset is being instilled.