6
August 2001
Contents
Entrepreneurship at MIT Should be
MIT-Wide
Aggressively Prototype Cross-Campus
Electives
Try Institute-wide Mini Seminars
& Speaker Series
Rethink Cornerstone Entrepreneurship
Class
Offer Institute-Wide Technology
& Business Speaker Series
Offer Thematic Technology Ventures
Seminars
Articulate Multiple Pathways Through
Curriculum and Extracurriculum
MIT Entrepreneurial Strategy Class
MIT Emerging Technology Highlights
MIT Technology Roadmaps
MIT Technologies with New Venture
Potential
MIT Biotech Ventures Seminar
MIT Tinytech Ventures Seminar
MIT Infotech Ventures Seminar
Entrepreneurship
at MIT Should be MIT-Wide – Currently the E-Center is physically at MIT Sloan
and run by business school faculty, meaning that, in practice, it is a
predominantly MIT Sloan operation.
Rather, perhaps the Center, the engineering/business class mix, and the
class content should be shifted towards the rest of MIT. Let’s embrace the essence of the Institute
and run the entrepreneurship tracks “MIT-style”, actively considering the
business implications of technological change, certainly via a survey of
emerging technology sectors, but also by better welcoming science and
engineering students into traditionally “MBA-only” classes.
Aggressively
Prototype Cross-campus Electives & Institute-wide Mini Seminars &
Speaker Series
– Both “Institute-Wide Electives” and much more flexible mini-courses would
allow us to both introduce key ideas to more people, while keeping the load and
burden on Professors to a minimum. We
need to educate and inspire students from all around MIT by deploying key
content from and throughout MIT. Such
courses are also a vehicle allowing MIT Sloan to reach out to the rest of MIT
in an inexpensive, but high value fashion.
As a collateral benefit, we maximize the odds that people who ought to
meet one another actually do, thus furthering the goal of better cross-campus
connections.
Articulate
Multiple Pathways through a Rich Pool of Classes & Extracurriculars – We ought to offer
multiple alternative suggested Pathways through the curricular and
extracurricular offerings at MIT. Most
students only realize what they should have done by the time they’re ready to
leave. The Core is clear, but Pathways
through the Electives are a rather murky hodgepodge. We might even have different emphases during each semester. For example, Fall might emphasize
brainstorming and thinking through a wide range of emerging technology business
possibilities. The Spring might
emphasize drilling down more thoroughly into specific opportunities, consider
the technology strategy implications, and more. In any case, more substantive advice than “Track Requirements” is
needed. MIT and MIT Sloan really needs
to think about Electives and Extracurricular strategy to the same extent as the
Core has been considered.
MIT
Technology & Entrepreneurial Strategy Class – 12 unit spring-semester
Institute-wide elective – A case and projects class assessing the business
implications of emerging technologies.
Such an integrative technology strategy class might be the next generation
of Technology & Competitive Strategy. E-Strategy is like traditional Technology Strategy crossed
with New Enterprises to form an Applied Technology Strategy. The class essentials would include:
(1)
Emerging Technologies -- A survey of emerging technologies in the
Institute’s core strategic thrusts towards Tiny Technologies, Biotechnologies,
Information Technologies, and Complex Systems Engineering;
(2)
Essential Business Strategy Cases -- Both classic and live technology business
strategy cases in each of these sectors, drawing especially from relatively
recent cases; and
(3)
New Venture Projects -- Team-based projects prototyping new technology
ventures in each of these sectors.
Possibly run this course jointly with Harvard University as a
Combined-Institute-wide elective, attracting medical, law, business, and other
school students with as many sections as needed, but promoting good mixing.
MIT
Technology Business Essentials – 3 unit fall-semester Institute-wide elective – A
speaker series with a dozen MIT Sloan faculty and alumni highlighting
essentials of technology business for scientists and engineers. This is like a “15.123 Nuts and Bolts of Business” taught by key business faculty
highlighting their own personal interests, research, and scholarly specialties
while placing these all in a larger context.
This might be a key element of MIT Sloan’s outreach to the rest of MIT,
featuring the “Best of Sloan” and the essence of each professor’s full-semester
classes. Since our goal is to educate
and inspire as many young people as possible, we videotape all speakers and
cablecast on MIT student cable and aggressively distribute to IIT’s in India
and any other school that is a strong source of technologists. Ideal candidate speakers from MIT Sloan
include at least:
John
Sterman
Rebecca
Henderson
Tom
Allen
Lester
Thurow
Arnie
Barnett
Bob
Gibbons
Ely
Dehan
Howard
Anderson
John
Hauser
Charlie
Fine
Mary
Rowe
Duncan
Simester
Steve
Eppinger
Ed
Roberts
Kevin
Rock
Rudi
Dornbusch
Bill
Pounds
Peter
Senge
…and
several more
MIT
Emerging Technology Highlights – 3 unit fall-semester Institute-wide elective – A
speaker series with a dozen or so MIT technologists highlighting fields at the
Institute ranging from the nascent and speculative to those on the cusp of
commercialization, all mapped to the MIT’s core strategic research thrusts
towards Tiny Technologies, Biotechnologies, Information Technologies, and
Complex Systems. We ask every speaker
to spotlight their own work, put it in context of work done by peers, and, finally,
to cast forth on the emerging business implications, including their own
startup company experiences. MIT Sloan
technology strategy faculty might provide context by offering introductory
technology-business overviews of each sector.
Ideal candidate speakers from MIT include at least:
Tiny
Marty Schmidt MEMS
Joe Jacobson NanoMedia
Ian Hunter Nanoinstrumentation
Alex Slocum Precision
Engineering
Alan Epstein Microturbine
Jackie Ying Nanostructures
Christina Ortiz Nanomechanics
Info
Leon Kimerling Photonics
Tom Knight Computing
Neil Gershenfeld Physics
& Media
Hal Abelson Crypto
Victor Zue Voice
Tim Berners-Lee Web
Tom Leighton Algorythmics
Bio
Noubar Afeyan Bioinfo
Bob Langer ChemE
Phil Sharp Neuro
Dava Newman Physio
Complex
Mario Molina Environmental
Systems
Ed Crawley Satellites
Yossi Sheffi Logistics
John Hansman Air
Traffic Control and Cockpit
…and many more
MIT
Technology Roadmaps – 3 unit fall-semester Institute-wide elective – Complementing
Emerging Technology Highlights, the Technology Roadmaps class encourages
students to pick a specific emerging technology sector of particular interest
and systematically map out indices of performance, rates of innovation, key
bottlenecks, physical limitations, improvement trendlines, and other elements
of forecasting wisdom. Results are
shared with classmates, ideally published in a journal article, and possibly
published in a Tech Roadmaps compendium.
This might be a very modest example of a MIT Graduate Research
Opportunities Connection (GROC pronounced “grok”) encouraging technology
business-oriented students to perform focused special projects with MIT
technology faculty. This Roadmapping
has already been partially prototyped by Professor Charlie Fine with several
MBA students. Example areas for
Technology Roadmapping include at least:
Microphotonics
Fiber
bandwidth
MEMS
Micropower
Microfluidics
Wireless
Nanotechnology
Neurotechnology
Medical
Imaging
Genomics
Bioinformatics
Proteinomics
Sequencing
…and
many others
MIT
Technologies with New Venture Potential – 3 unit H1 first-half fall-semester Institute-wide
elective – A project seminar featuring one or two dozen researchers from all
around MIT presenting technologies ripe for potential commercialization. Students in the class select one technology
to assess more thoroughly. They
research enough of the technology to understand its implications, consider
alternative market opportunities, and prepare an essential executive summary or
short business brief proposing a new venture or structure to commercialize the
technology. Students finishing the H1
first-half-semester Technologies with New Venture Potential can feed right into
the H2 second-half-semester Technology Venture Seminars in three (or more)
broad categories. A version of such a
class was run by Professor Drazen Prelec as a Marketing seminar (15.830). Example technologists and technologies might
include:
Joe
Pompei’s Audio Spotlight
Rob
Britton’s MicroArrays
Brian
Hubert’s Nanostippler
Elroy
Pearson’s Holovideo
Anne
Mayes’s Filtration Membranes
Richard
Young’s Cell MicroArrays
Mandayam
Srinivasan’s Haptic Systems
Moungi
Bawendi’s Quantum Dots
Robert
Hovitz’s Serotonin savvy
Alan
Fenn’s Radar Oncotherapeutics
John
Negele’s Teraflop Computers
Joseph
Coughlin’s Dementia Guide
Veronique
Bugnion’s Weather Futures
Sebastian
Seung’s Complex Image Recognition algorithms
Seth
Lloyd’s Quantum Computers
Daniel
Cohn’s Plasmatron Anti-Emission scheme
Neville
Hogan’s Robotherapist
Howard
Shrobe’s Intelligent Room
Eric
Grimson’s Machine Learning
Yet-Ming
Chiang’s Active Materials
…and
many, many more possibilities
MIT
Biotech Ventures Seminar – 3 unit H2 second-half fall-semester Institute-wide elective – A
discussion seminar surveying biotechnology-specific technology strategy cases
in a discussion format. Cases include
industry classics and live cases featuring MIT alumni and local entrepreneurs
at various stages of building their businesses. Possibly limit total class size by requesting one paragraph
applications or more. Actively recruit
best students as participants drawn from all around MIT. Possibly include a few MIT entrepreneur
alums to spice things up, perhaps even lead the discussion. Possible Cases include: Millennium, Spotfire, MolecularWare,
Neurometrix, ACT Medical, Alza, Affymetrix, PerCeptive, Biogen, Vertex,
Neogenesis, Biotrove, Cambridge Heart, Engeneos, SurfaceLogix, and others…
MIT
Tinytech Ventures Seminar – 3 unit H2 second-half fall-semester Institute-wide elective – A
discussion seminar surveying micro-thru-nano, chips & hardware -specific
technology strategy cases in a discussion format. Cases include industry classics and live cases featuring MIT
alumni and local entrepreneurs at various stages of building their
businesses. Possibly limit total class
size by requesting one paragraph applications or more. Actively recruit best students as
participants drawn from all around MIT.
Possibly include a few MIT entrepreneur alums to spice things up,
perhaps even lead the discussion.
Possible Cases include: Iridigm
Display, MicroChips, SurfaceLogix, EINK, Analog Devices, Nanovation, Sycamore,
and others…
MIT
Infotech Ventures Seminar – 3 unit H2 second-half fall-semester Institute-wide elective – A
discussion seminar surveying information, computation, communication, and
media-specific technology strategy cases in a discussion format. Cases include industry classics and live
cases featuring MIT alumni and local entrepreneurs at various stages of
building their businesses. Possibly
limit total class size by requesting one paragraph applications or more. Actively recruit best students as
participants drawn from all around MIT.
Possibly include a few MIT entrepreneur alums to spice things up,
perhaps even lead the discussion.
Possible Cases include: Akamai,
DataSage, Virtual Machine Works, Curl, Frictionless Commerce, Firefly,
Wildfire, Charmed, and others…
###