Technology Entrepreneurship in Engineering Education: Harnessing the Technology Entrepreneurs in Filipino Engineering Students

The eventual career path of the young Filipino engineer after college graduation isemployment with a multinational corporation. This traditional mindset has been moldedover the years through the relentless and aggressive recruitment of MNC’S, which promiselarge salaries and compensatory benefits to new graduates. Very few, if some, take theless traveled but admittedly rockier road of starting up their own businesses. The paperdiscusses the rationale, methodology, and the results of an engineering elective coursecalled Technology Entrepreneurship. The impetus for offering the course is the realizationthat engineering graduates are fully capable of helping propel the nation to progressthrough the fruition of technological researches into viable business ventures. The coursewas designed with two objectives considered: to educate and to inspire. The educationalplatform offered a full month seminar on devising feasibility studies for technology drivenor market driven ideas and researches. This included seminars on marketing, supply chain,and accounting and finance. The "inspirational" platform included encouraging talks byalumni engineer entrepreneurs who shared their own experiences and valuable lessonsgained in startup businesses. The talks covered areas such as business opportunityrecognition, societal and economic awareness, organizational issues in startups,and venture capitalists, none of which are covered by the regular engineering curriculum. Thefull paper shall include a discussion of methodology, execution, results, and feedback onthe course.