Faculty and Staff Receive Grants for Entrepreneurship Education and Research Programs

Five teams of ASU faculty and staff received $158,809 to fund their entrepreneurship education and research programs. The Pathways to Entrepreneurship Grant was awarded to innovative programs ranging from exploring biomimicry for new product innovation to teaching students to examine the ethnography of SkySong.

Selected projects this semester were:

GlobalResolve provides ASU students with a global reach to promote sustainable entrepreneurship to rural and underprivileged communities throughout the world. Initiatives include development of a water purification system for an impoverished village in Ghana. The grant will help GlobalResolve provide training and education in entrepreneurship with an international angle to ASU students and the community.

The team includes:
Mark Henderson, Professor, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering
David Jacobson, Professor, School of Global Studies

The Designing for Resilience: Translating Resilience Indicators into Design Criteria for New Product Innovation project will advance the collaborative research between InnovationSpace faculty and Resilience Solutions Group. InnovationSpace is an entrepreneurial joint venture among the College of Design, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, and W.P. Carey School of Business. InnovationSpace is a research lab that teaches students how to develop products that create market value while serving real societal needs and minimizing impacts on the environment. Resilience Solutions Group is an interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators, and public-health-minded citizens who are committed to help individuals become more resilient. The project’s team defines resilience as the “capacity of individuals, families, and communities to regain equilibrium and well-being after encountering destabilizing challenges.”

The team includes:
Prasad Boradkar, Associate Professor, College of Design; Co-Director, InnovationSpace
John Stuart Hall, Professor, College of Public Programs
Alex Zautra, Professor, Department of Psychology

Transforming Nascent Product Concepts to Commercial Readiness will focus on the commercialization potential of product concepts generated in InnovationSpace. The goal of this project is to identify products that have market potential. The project will use graduate students from design, business, engineering, as well as local entrepreneurs.

The team includes:
Thomas Duening, Director, Entrepreneurial Programs Office
Prasad Boradkar, Associate Professor, College of Design; Co-Director, InnovationSpace

Innovating from Life: Exploring Biomimicry- Based Solutions in Product Design will introduce students, staff, faculty, and corporate sponsors of InnovationSpace to the principles of biomimicry in new product development. Biomimicry looks to the forms, materials, and functions of nature for clues to solving design and engineering problems. The grant will allow InnovationSpace to expand to include partnerships with the Biomimicry Institute, and with graduate teaching assistants and faculty from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Biodesign Institute.

The team includes:
Philip White, Assistant Professor, College of Design
Adelheid Fischer, Program Manager, InnovationSpace
Prasad Boradkar, Associate Professor, College of Design; Co-Director, InnovationSpace

Ethnography & Innovation: A Course and Observational Study of the SkySong Community will train students to conduct ethnographic research on innovation and entrepreneurship at SkySong. The team sees SkySong as an experiment in its inherent design, and is an “innovation incubator,” where different firms, speaking different languages will interact.

The team includes:
Jameson M. Wetmore, Assistant Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Sander van der Leeuw, Professor and Director, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Nancy Jurik, Professor, School of Justice and Social Inquiry
Amber Wutich, Assistant Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Since spring 2007, 13 faculty and staff programs have been awarded $414,823 through the Pathways to Entrepreneurship Grant each semester. In December 2006, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City designated ASU as a Kauffman Campus and a recipient of a $5 million grant to promote cross-campus entrepreneurship.