Workshops, Presentations and Seminars

Fulton Undergraduate Engineering Leadership (FUEL) Summer Program – May 31st-June 10th, 2016

This was a two week Problem-Based project for Barrett honor students at Arizona State University who wanted additional experience in engineering problem solving and entrepreneurial thinking. The program consisted of 40 students who formed problem-solution teams to develop potential solutions including prototypes to tested and validated prior to being presented on their last day of the program. They were taught the basics of Lean Startup, Entrepreneurial Mindset and Customer Discovery to assist them in developing solutions that were both valuable and technically feasible.

Scenario Description:

“We are FultonX. We manufacture ‘cool stuff’. We’ve taken a gamble and acquired a few promising start-ups. We need to diversity our portfolio of products, and open new markets. There is no future in widgets, which we currently manufacture. We desperately need new and successful product launches to either thrive through innovation, or dive. Some of the employees of these startups have stayed on as principals at FultonX. We also just hired a number of new engineers eager to prove themselves.

Our task for the week is to test and validate these prototypes. We need ensure their viability at both the engineering and at the business levels. At the end of this process, we will and make a pitch to the VP of Manufacturing at FultonX and recommend whether or not to proceed with production. All teams are being asked to go back to the drawing board and iterate their product development process. We have hired subject matter experts as consultants to guide us through this process.

The stakes are high for everyone to succeed. The new engineers (Session B newbies) have a stake in proving their value, and being recognized a intrapreneurs to help lead innovation. The principals from the start ups have a stake in the success as there is a special clause in their contracts for significant shares from the sales of their former company’s products. We all have a stake in the VP of Manufacturing making the right decision, otherwise we may be a company with a bleak future because we were leap-frogged by other innovators, or we have the opportunity to be recognized as the Innovator of Year by the Society for Manufacturing Excellence.”

Entrepreneurial Mindset Mini-workshop – Arizona State University E2 Summer Camp Prescott, Arizona August 2nd-11th, 2016 (40) 45 minute Entrepreneurial Thinking workshops

E2 is an introduction to ASU and Fulton Schools of engineering culture. It provides new students with the opportunity to meet faculty and staff, make new friends and participate in a variety of fun and interactive activities. This three day event is mandatory for all incoming freshmen to attend.

One of the activities is an Entrepreneurial Learning challenge. Students are given a design challenge and have to interact with “customers” to understand a dynamic set of changing customer requirements. It incorporates the three key elements of Entrepreneurial Mindset(EM) defined in the KEEN program; Curiosity, Connections and Creating Value. These sessions are 45 minutes long and conclude with a demonstration of their initial prototypes and a debriefing regarding what they learned about the challenge including the EM component.

Entrepreneurial Mindset Workshop – Arizona State University, Undergraduate Engineering Resident Assistants Cohort August 18th, 2017

Resident Assistants provide students living at ASU dormitories with guidance and support while they live on campus. The purpose of this workshop was to provide them with a basic understanding of Entrepreneurial Mindset and how it impacts engineering design and value creation. The workshop was based on the KEEN 3Cs: Curiosity, Connections and Creating Value.

Technology Entrepreneurship Workshop – National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan September 26th-29th, 2017

Overview of the Tech Entrepreneurship Workshop in Islamabad

This 3 day experiential workshop covered the basics of technology entrepreneurship using Lean Startup, Design Thinking and the Lean Product Process. Approximately 100 graduate engineering students and faculty attended. The goal was to provide a step-by-step approach to moving ideas and innovations from the lab to the marketplace. Small startup teams of 4 to 6 members moved through the process of ideation, finding problem-solution fit, customer discovery and finding product-market fit ultimately concluding with a 5 minute investor type pitch.

Entrepreneurial Mindset Workshop – Arizona State University, Computer Science, Tempe, Arizona March 8th, 2018

Senior computer science students working on a cyber-security project were required to include elements of the 3Cs in their investigation of cyber security vulnerabilities at local tech companies. The requirements included complete interviews with clients to understand their cyber-security concerns and to garner permission to make an assessment of their cyber vulnerabilities. Upon completion of the project we did a complete debrief of what they learned and whether they correctly understood the customer pain points.

Entrepreneurial Mindset as The Foundation For Tech Innovation – Webinar presented to UET-Peshawar, Pakistan and NUST-Islamabad, Pakistan December 11th, 2018

How Entrepreneurial Mindset Unlocks Tech Innovation

This online webinar provided graduate engineering students in the PCASE Program (Pakistan Center for the Advanced Studies in Energy) with an overview of Entrepreneurial Mindset and how it creates the foundation for tech innovation.

Brown Bag Lunch Talk – The Metaboxical Leap, A Paradoxical Approach to Innovation Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden June 4th, 2019

The MetaBoxical Leap

This talk on innovation was presented at Chalmers University on June 4th, 2019. It is a paradoxical approach to innovation that simultaneously uses the Box and expands the Box through the exploration of adjacent possibilities and dares to imagine further through imaginative leaps into deep problem space. The MetaBoxical toolkit uses a combination of thinking tools and creative processes to explore both the adjacent possible and beyond. The interaction of the actual with the possible initiates the process of innovation. Leaps of intuition and imagination push the exploration into the world of “unknown” unknowns. Design Thinking, Lateral Thinking, Essential Tension and a well-structured creative process increases the possibility of new discoveries and breakthrough innovations.

Seminar on teaching and practicing an entrepreneurial mindset to engineering students, Faculty Training, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden, June 4th, 2019

This seminar focused on methods to effectively teach Entrepreneurial Mindset to engineering students. It was based in part on the 3Cs of the KEEN model of teaching entrepreneurial mindset—Curiosity, Connections and Creating Value and the relationships between mindset and engineering skill sets. The seminar concluded with the approach I use to teach value creation which is based on customer discovery and the Lean Startup model.