Employers, investors and others searching for talent place a premium on relevant experience. However, students, individuals seeking a change in their careers, and prospective entrepreneurs often find it difficult to obtain positions that can provide needed experience, even if they are willing to work without compensation. This conundrum often leads to people taking or staying in positions for which they have no passion and which do not make the best use of their abilities. The Center’s program is designed to provide extensive, intensive and relevant experience to its participants, with particular emphasis on teaching them to adapt to – and thrive in – our lightning fast, rapidly changing and increasingly “flat” world.
Professionals and others wishing to learn something new do not have to be enrolled in an academic institution to be considered a “student.” Fluency in spoken and written English and computer literacy are required.As an independent organization, the Center’s program and activities are not restricted to any particular institution or jurisdiction. Thus the Center can attract students, clients, professionals and other stakeholders, establish collaborations, and pursue other opportunities appropriate to its mission almost anywhere
Educating Students to Facilitate New Ventures from Research Institution Technologies
Teams of graduate and undergraduate students from many disciplines, including, but not limited to business, law, engineering, the physical and life sciences, medicine and communications, work under the supervision and mentorship of experienced volunteer professionals, serial entrepreneurs, executives, and investors to assist the Center’s research institution, emerging company and entrepreneurial clients. Student teams provide technical and commercial evaluations of technologies from universities, government agencies, and private and public research facilities, identify new applications and seek entrepreneurs who are interested in creating new ventures around these technologies.
Educating Students to Nurture Emerging Companies and Entrepreneurs for Success
The Center’s involvement in educating its students by nurturing emerging companies does not cease after the creation of a new venture. Student teams, operating virtually and in person if necessary, provide qualified entrepreneurs and emerging companies with a variety of services, including, but not limited to, legal advice and document preparation on a wide variety of intellectual property, business, licensing and regulatory matters; legal audits; corporate governance compliance; strategic planning, including business plans, marketing and financial strategies, market research, competitive analysis, branding, and online marketing; potential funding opportunities, including identifying potential angel and institutional investors and assisting with presentations to them; technical and regulatory assistance; and other services. Clients will also have access to online tutorials, articles, and web casts covering a wide variety of topics and targeting varying levels of experience.
Partnering with Traditional Academic Institutions on Courses and Activities
The mission of the Center is to provide world-class trans-disciplinary real-world experiential education to its students. The Center believes that the education it offers complements and enriches the more traditional academic instruction and simulated training on which other institutions concentrate. Although the Center was established to offer stand-alone experiential education, the Center welcomes the opportunity to partner with such institutions to include its programs as additional courses (including independent study) or as part of existing courses at such institutions and to create activities at such institutions that promote entrepreneurship among their students and employees.
Training Students to Foster Collaboration with Other Organizations with Similar Goals
Given the advances in collaborative technologies, the Center works very closely with incubators, accelerators and research parks, which are organizations that support the entrepreneurial process and greatly enhance an emerging company’s prospect of success. The Center works to network these stakeholders to each other by making the Center’s web site available as a portal to share knowledge, introduce them to the activities, company mix, services, and expertise each can offer, and to assist in matching their respective companies to complementary technologies and business models.
Creating a Global Collaborative Network through Student Participation
The Center’s program encompasses a robust international component by attracting students from and collaborating with research institutions, incubators and accelerators, research parks, entrepreneurs, emerging companies, professionals, investors, and other public and private organizations outside the United States that share the Center’s mission and goals. These individuals and entities are also connected with the networks created to manage and share the accumulated knowledge of the Center’s stakeholders. Students participate in all aspects of creating and implementing these collaborations. Among the activities being developed are international exchanges of students and professionals.
Educating Students to Inculcate a Passion for Empowerment among Youth
The center is also focused on planting the seeds of entrepreneurship in undergraduates and among students in elementary and secondary schools. It is critical that the Center be deeply engaged in creating a lasting infrastructure of entrepreneurs and professionals who are conversant with and prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that a worldwide knowledge-based economy will present. The Center and its students will collaborate closely with educators, school boards, economic development experts, and organizations whose missions include inspiring students to pursue careers in math, science, technology, and business. Likewise, the Center and its students will assist in the development and implementation of curricula, and also provide its services to young entrepreneurs with the objective of nurturing their businesses and empowering them to derive commercial value from their inventions and discoveries.
Leading the Way in Tran-Disciplinary Education and Research
The Center and its partners plan to offer live and on-line trans-disciplinary courses to the public on a wide variety of subjects of importance to the growth and prosperity of emerging companies and to the successful commercialization of technology. Each course is planned in modules starting at a basic level of proficiency and advancing in complexity and difficulty. Emphasis will be placed on the practical application of the material and on providing the participant with a compendium of resources to which she can turn when the need arises. Certificates of completion of various course groupings may also be issued. Courses would be translated into other languages to increase their accessibility if funding can be secured for that purpose. The Center and its partners intend to become global leaders in trans-disciplinary education in technology commercialization, new enterprise development, and use of disagreement avoidance and alternative dispute resolution methods to achieve better outcomes and avoid the expense, delay and trauma of litigation in knowledge-based economic sectors.
The Center also plans to host conferences, either alone or in collaboration with other organizations, on the topics discussed in the following paragraph.
The Center plans to conduct research on technology commercialization, entrepreneurship, disagreement avoidance and alternative dispute resolution in the technology sector, and the impacts of trans-disciplinary experiential education, especially as conducted over the Internet. The Center also plans to publish articles, monographs, and other scholarship on these subjects.
The Center also monitors existing and proposed federal, state, local, foreign and multilateral legislation and regulations that may impact technology transfer and commercialization and presents policy options to government and opinion leaders on ways to facilitate these processes.
The Center also plans to host conferences, either alone or in collaboration with other organizations, on the topics discussed in the following paragraph.
The Center plans to conduct research on technology commercialization, entrepreneurship, disagreement avoidance and alternative dispute resolution in the technology sector, and the impacts of trans-disciplinary experiential education, especially as conducted over the Internet. The Center also plans to publish articles, monographs, and other scholarship on these subjects.
The Center also monitors existing and proposed federal, state, local, foreign and multilateral legislation and regulations that may impact technology transfer and commercialization and presents policy options to government and opinion leaders on ways to facilitate these processes.
Pursuing an Ambitious but Essential Agenda
The Center is undertaking an ambitious, but essential, agenda based on educating the technology leaders of the future. The Center seeks to achieve a winning situation for everyone who participates, collaborates, and sponsors its programs. Ultimately, ideas with substantial commercial potential can be converted into successful products and services that satisfy important societal needs. With its innovative on-line methods of delivering knowledge, services, and state-of-the-art systems of collaboration, the Center is an important force in creating and nurturing the technology enterprises of the future.