Jenkins MBA’s HiTEC model helps innovators, investors communicate
Have you ever been befuddled when listening to scientists – or any researchers – talk about their latest cool project?
Chances are, you were following the conversation by just a thread. That threat can snap if you’re an investor listing to a researcher who can’t get to the value point of his project before you tune out.
A video posted to YouTube by COHiTEC Portugal, an organization that supports the creation and licensing of technology based startups in that country, captures the essence of the struggle that scientists have when trying to explain their discoveries to a business person.
The video also shows how a set of graduate courses – part of the Jenkins MBA curriculum at NC State University’s Poole College of Management – helps to bridge the gap between research and business.
This is the ninth summer that professors from Poole College in Raleigh, N.C., and Brown University in Providence, R.I., have traveled to Oporto and Lisbon, Portugal, to help teams of researchers prepare and pitch business plans based on their technologies. It’s the final step in the intense, four-month program.
“We have to change the way we present and the way we speak, because this is business, this is not science,” one of COHiTEC 2013 program participants says in the video.
Teams of scientists, technologists and management students at NC State go through the same process when completing the HiTEC sequence as part of the Jenkins MBA program’s concentration in entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. The sequence is also available as a graduate certificate course for post-baccalaureate students. The NC State students pitch their business plans in May, just before graduating.
COHiTEC’s video reflects the vigor of the program and the potential it provides for helping scientists and technologists to bring their innovations to the marketplace.
Since its start in 2004, 427 researchers and 214 management students have completed the program through COHiTEC Portugal, assessing the commercialization potential of 123 projects. The end result: 17 technology based companies were created based on the R&D projects.
In addition to training presenters for the CoHiTEC program, NC State faculty have trained presenters of the HITEC courses for MBA programs at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, Loughborough University in the U.K., Brown University, Hanbat University in South Korea, and in Slovenia.
At NC State, 550 engineering and MBA students have assessed more than 350 technologies over the years, resulting in 31 start-ups.
One of the recent startups evolving from the program is Tethys, a company based on technology developed by a researcher in NC State’s College of Natural Resources for desalinating water with applications in fracking and other industrial processes.
This past summer, two teams from the college’s spring 2013 MBA graduating classes have been in the process of incorporating their new ventures, Air Glow and AccuFlow, said Roger Debo, director of The Entrepreneurship Collaborate at Poole College, HiTEC’s home base.
The TEC Algorithm – the crux of the HiTEC curriculum – was developed by Dr. Angus Kingon, formerly professor of materials science in NC State’s College of Engineering and now at Brown University, and Dr. Steve Markham, professor in Poole College’s Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Their work in developing the algorithm was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science.
Markham is currently incorporating new tools, such as big data analytics, into the HiTEC process as he expands its focus in response to organizations’ need to enhance front end of innovation. This project is funded by the Center for Innovation Management Studies based in Poole College.
In addition to the HiTEC concentration, staff members in The Entrepreneurship Collaborative (TEC) manage the Acceleration of Technology Commercialization program for the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund at NC State. TEC also is home base for the college’s undergraduate entrepreneurship curriculum.
Related information:
The Entrepreneurship Collaborative
Poole College Jenkins MBA Program
Jenkins MBA concentration in entrepreneurship and technology commercialization
CoHiTEC Portugal
