Stevens Entrepreneurship Experts Collaborate with Malaysian National University UKM

Recently, faculty and executive administrators from Stevens Institute of Technology collaborated with the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to deliver a workshop in Malaysia on innovation and transforming academic research into startup companies.

Hoboken, NJ, October 09, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Stevens Institute of Technology, the Innovation University (TM), with its rich, 140-year history of research, education and technology development, has taken the lead in evolving a unique approach to university-based technology commercialization encapsulated within the Technogenesis® environment of academic entrepreneurship and enterprise development.

"Stevens has engaged its community of faculty, students, alumni and administration in a process of academic entrepreneurship that has paved the way for the development of patented disruptive technologies as well as the launch of award winning start-up companies like PlasmaSol and Hydroglobe that are benefiting our society and the global market," explains Dr. George P. Korfiatis, Interim President and Provost of Stevens. "We are building the future today at Stevens Institute of Technology."

This culture of innovation is being adapted for universities around the world and Stevens expertise and dedication to technology transfer in engineering, science and management make Stevens a leader in the global academic community.

Collaboration with the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Over the past few decades, technology commercialization has become an important feature of the modern research university. In this 21st century academic model, universities not only create new knowledge and disseminate it, but they also take the ideas and research traditionally nurtured in academia and help transform them into successful products and services in the global marketplace. Thus, the modern university has come to take on the added role of active participation in the process of creating wealth, jobs and prosperity generated by its technological innovations. As this model has taken hold in the United States, other nations are increasingly investing in the commercialization of their university-generated technology and are thus beginning to place their educational institutions at the forefront of tomorrow's global economy.

Recently, faculty and executive administrators from Stevens collaborated with the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to deliver a workshop in Malaysia on innovation and transforming academic research into startup companies.

"Present day Malaysia is a relatively new country with a long, rich cultural history, and it is aggressively seeking to expand its economy, create jobs, build prosperity and promote social advances," explains Dr. Lex McCusker, Associate Dean of the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens.

"It is looking to all its research universities and especially to its national educational institution, UKM, to usher in the next-generation of research and development that will grow its economy and develop the technologies of the future."

Funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Education to help accelerate the commercialization of Malaysian university technology, Stevens offered its Workshop in Capacity Building in Innovation Technology Transfer and University Start-Ups in Malaysia in the summer of 2010. The workshop included customized lectures, case studies, hands-on exercises and personal coaching for 120 professors, researchers, university staff, business professionals, and government officials in Malaysia.

"The workshop is designed for university researchers, faculty and administrators as well as government officials, entrepreneurs and investors with an interest in university-based technology commercialization," says Malcolm Kahn, Vice President of Enterprise Development and Licensing at Stevens.

"We provide an interactive experience with state-of-the-art collaboration tools such as ID8 Systems (http://www.id8systems.com), a revolutionary concept for tapping into organizational talent and ideas, and we mentored participants through the entire process from idea generation to a final presentation of the plan for a start-up company to investors and government and university officials."

The workshop was delivered in three phases.

1. one week of on-site seminars and exercises using 15 Malaysian technologies where participants were taught how to build businesses and create business plans,
2. a six-week interim session where Stevens personnel virtually mentored each of the groups while they performed market research and refined their business plans, and
3. on-site coaching where each of the 15 teams worked with the team of Stevens mentors over a three-day period in further developing their business plans.

The workshop used a practical, hands-on, experiential style of pedagogy that is commonly used at Stevens.

About Stevens Office of Academic Entrepreneurship

Stevens Institute of Technology has been at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship since its founding by the 19th century entrepreneur Edwin A. Stevens. The Office of Academic Entrepreneurship (OAE) seeks to redefine the traditional university-industry technology transfer process by creating an unconventional entrepreneurial solution: the Academic-Innovation-Transfer process. OEA seeks to establish an open system in which diverse partners combine their complementary expertise to create technological innovations that lead to successful market ventures.

The mission of the OAE is to initiate academic entrepreneurship at the faculty level and achieve support for such activities at the administrative level. Education, outreach, and events hosted by the OAE encourage entrepreneurial behavior through fostering and nurturing an entrepreneurial culture throughout academic communities.

Visit OAE online: http://www.stevens.edu/entrepreneurship/

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Stevens Institute of Technology
Dr. Christos Christodoulatos, Associate Provost, OAE
201-216-5675
http://research.stevens.edu/index.php/entrepreneurial-experts
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