Many universities successfully accomplish their primary mission of teaching and/or research, and yet have not established or nurtured a tradition of new venture creation based on those teaching and research successes. This lack of entrepreneurial tradition (or culture) means not only that there are few local new venture firms to act as role models for potential entrepreneurs in the academic community, but also that many community members with exciting new concepts never even consider that their concepts could result in a commercialized product. In order to establish such a culture of new venture creation within a university, decisions must be made to either spend limited resources to nurture early “model ventures,” or to spend the resources to create an infrastructure that will nurture many new ventures. As a result of such decisions being made and implemented over the last decade at the University of Arkansas (in partnership with governmental and private entities), the University is on the edge of becoming a center of entrepreneurial activity in the state of Arkansas. This paper will discuss the decisions that have been implemented at the University of Arkansas as a case study in establishing an entrepreneurial culture at a land grant institution of higher education.

PROBLEMS ADDRESSEDBusiness students generally study the application of business techniques to high technology industry with limited knowledge of how the technology is created or evolves. Conversely, engineering and science students are typically not introduced to entrepreneurship or commercialization concepts for the advanced technology that they are developing within their graduate curricula. What these academic approaches fail to provide students interested in high-tech commercialization is not only the needed knowledge outside of a student's parent program, but also the interaction between students and faculty from the different disciplines (technology and business). Consequently, in their later roles on product development teams or start-ups, graduates' incomplete competencies often hamper project success.Universities often also neglect the commercialization of technology derived from on-campus research. It frequently languishes because faculty members never consider that their technology advance could result in a commercialized product, or they prefer, instead, to invest their resources in new research. By not promoting research commercialization, universities neglect a vast resource that could be used to create value for faculty and other stakeholders. MAJOR EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVESA graduate course was created that responded to the need for developing competencies in the entrepreneurial processes of identifying and evaluating new technical product ideas, acquiring and deploying resources for commercial implementation, and developing the required organizational infrastructure. Specific educational objectives included the following points.1. To increase understanding about the creation and evolution of high-tech entrepreneur ventures, including the importance of the interdependencies between business and technology expertise. 317 318 Teaching Brief 2. To identify and simulate the basic decisions that a technology entrepreneur faces, including technology selection, product design, market analysis, and financing. 3. To develop leadership skills for technological opportunity identification, risk assessment, resource development, and venture growth management. 4. To develop communication and team skills, with special attention to the challenge and importance of cross-functional team-based technology endeavors.Collectively, accomplishment of these objectives was expected to enhance the students' ability to contribute to the value chain, starting with technology advances and going through product development and commercialization to delivery of customer value. INNOVATIVE AND UNIQUE FEATURESThe educational objectives presented above were the basis for the design and implementation of a new graduate course, "Intra/entrepreneurship of Technology." This course emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in technology-based ventures. Faculty, presenters, students, and researchers from across the university and region come together to develop a dynamic learning community. ...

Background: The University of Arkansas defined in 1998 an experimental interdisciplinary technology graduate program in Microelectronics-Photonics (microEP). While the microEP Graduate Program is an interdisciplinary degree-granting entity reporting directly to the Graduate School, its academic program elements are reviewed and approved through the normal academic processes of both the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. Faculty and students enter the program primarily with Physics, Chemistry, and Electrical, Chemical, and Mechanical Engineering backgrounds, but may enter from any rigorous science or engineering degree program. The first students entered the program in the fall 1998 semester, with the MS and PhD microEP degrees fully approved in July 1999 and July 2000 respectively.

On the other end of the business size spectrum, small entrepreneurial technology startups are requiring their smaller employee base to not only develop the technology but also manufacture and market it. Robert Morgan has reported the results of a meeting of fifty leaders of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) that "Engineering employment in manufacturing has moved somewhat from large companies to medium and smaller ones, including many start-up businesses. These workforce changes have created a demand for engineers who can fuse technical, managerial, financial, and industrial skills." 5 The same attendees noted that future technologists "… need a breadth of knowledge to handle complex objectives and multidisciplinary functions, to understand non-engineering issues, and to perform systems engineering in a loosely bound environment".

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