Entrepreneurship Hub
University faculty in a classroom full of students being taught

Faculty-Led Activities & Competitions

Empowering faculty-driven entrepreneurship competitions to nurture talent and innovation university-wide.

Propose an Activity

Objective

The Faculty-Led Activities & Competitions initiative is designed to integrate entrepreneurship into the curriculum and showcase the community's talent. This initiative transforms classrooms into hubs of entrepreneurial thought, connecting academic theory with real-world application and preparing students for complex business challenges.

Purpose

This initiative seeks to enrich academic offerings and empower faculty by integrating competitions into coursework, thus fostering a culture of innovation. It provides students with incentives like cash prizes and access to mentor networks, extending classroom ideas to broader contexts for potential university-wide recognition. Through these competitions, students are encouraged to devise solutions for real-world challenges, from starting new ventures to solving societal issues, enhancing their entrepreneurial skills and mindset across the campus.

Details

Design of the Competitions

  1. Focus: Competitions should have a clear focus, which could involve solving specific industry or community problems, generating business ideas, or addressing societal issues.
  2. Student Recruitment and Team Formation: Competitions are open to students in specific classes but can extend beyond, using platforms like MIT Orbit to include other Bentley community members, or across classes for diverse expertise, such as combining Finance and CIS for Fintech solutions.
  3. Student Incentives: Besides academic credit, additional incentives provided by the E-hub can enhance student motivation and extend their projects beyond the classroom.
  4. Solution Presentations: Competitions should allow students to present their solutions, which can be organized within traditional class formats or with E-hub support for wider exposure.
  5. Judging: Competitions may include expert judges for feedback and assessment, with options to include external judges facilitated by the E-hub.

Competition Categories

  • New Innovation-driven Ventures: Focuses on student teams proposing innovative ideas with business potential in areas like Fintech and AI. These are not for launching small businesses like restaurants but for exploring substantial business ideas.
  • Intrapreneurship: Targets solving organizational problems with business partners providing real-world challenges for students to apply classroom concepts, such as Marketing or Process Management.
  • Social Entrepreneurship: Encourages addressing societal issues with potential benefits, often in collaboration with nonprofit partners to enhance problem understanding (in partnership with BSLCE).
  • Family-based Entrepreneurship: Aimed to help students explore scaling and diversification issues within family-owned businesses, with insights from existing small business partners.
  • Small Business or Side Hustle: Focuses on student teams developing small business ideas or a side hustle such as a consulting business, a photography business, or a restaurant among others.
  • Other, with a Problem-Solving or Entrepreneurial Element: Linked to course objectives that require students to create new ideas or solve problems (e.g. a Podcast series with Francophone entrepreneurs).

Support for Faculty from the E-hub

  • Financial Support: Approved faculty-led activities/competitions are eligible for:
    • Cash prizes of up to $300 for the winning team and $200 for the second-placed team.
    • Up to $300 for catering at the solutions presentation event.
    • A $250 stipend for the faculty member as recognition for their efforts.
  • Access to Judges: The E-hub can supplement the faculty's panel of judges with experts who can provide additional perspectives, such as ethical considerations for the proposed solutions.
  • Web Presence: The E-hub offers support in developing a web presence and online resources for the competition, including student team registration, according to faculty needs.
  • Promotion: The E-hub will help increase the competition's visibility across the campus and promote participation in other courses as identified by the faculty member.

Resources for Participants

  • Mentor Networks: Approved activities or competitions provide student participants with access to mentorship from faculty and, where appropriate, alumni.
  • MIT Orbit Platform: In partnership with the MIT Martin Trust Center, the Bentley E-hub offers the MIT Orbit Platform. This tool helps students connect across the Bentley community to form teams, extending beyond their current classes.
  • Entrepreneurship Resource-base: Participants will have access to a carefully selected list of resources. These resources are tagged with keywords relevant to different phases of entrepreneurship, facilitating easy and targeted access.

Communicating with the E-hub

  • Initial Communication: Faculty interested in organizing a competition should use the provided form to communicate with the E-hub, including details like competition dates, chosen category, and expected outcomes. A committee of faculty peers will assist in providing timely and constructive feedback.
  • Interdisciplinary Collaboration: The E-hub encourages faculty to collaborate across disciplines to enhance learning and the potential for impactful solutions. Examples include partnering Finance with CIS, or Data Analytics with English classes.
  • Acknowledging Sponsorship: The E-hub requests faculty to recognize its sponsorship in two ways:
    • When introducing the competition, faculty should mention E-hub’s support, including cash prizes, and direct students to E-hub resources.
    • During Solution Presentations: Acknowledge E-hub’s sponsorship again, and guide students to explore further E-hub resources and the website.