MTU has been to the forefront of entrepreneurship educational activity for many years and has a vibrant and thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. A dynamic team has evolved as part of that ecosystem that has enjoyed enormous success in developing a multi-faceted range of entrepreneurship / innovation programmes for our students and, more recently, for students in our partner universities. Led by Carole O’Leary, Regional Programme Manager for 3rd Level Student Entrepreneurship, the team consists of members of MTU academic staff together with staff from the MTU Entrepreneurship and Innovation Office and the MTU Rubicon Business Incubation Centre. The four principal pillars around which this team effort is structured are the Innovative Product Design (IPD) modules, the Student Inc. Entrepreneurship Programme, the Innovation Challenge and the annual MTU Prize for Innovation competition. These elements, which are constantly being improved, have been developed to ensure that they are complimentary to each other such that each of them focuses on different aspects of entrepreneurship education and engagement. Workshops and seminars with academic and industry entrepreneurship experts form a key part of three of these components - IPD, Innovation Challenge and Student Inc. The four elements have been developed in such a way that it is possible for students to partake in all of them and then move on to further MTU entrepreneurship and business development programmes. The team has developed significant levels of engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. These stakeholders include our students and academic faculty members, our university innovation/entrepreneurship support staff (including MTU’s commercialisation experts), external partners (such as companies, government agencies and NGOs) and people from the local entrepreneur/VC community. More recently, we have begun to engage with universities throughout Ireland, in the US, in Europe (as part of the EU Ingenium university alliance) and, this year, in Africa.
Finalist
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activators of the Year Award
Multi-Campus Team at MTU Delivering Multidisciplinary Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiatives
Finalist of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activators of the Year Award
Munster Technological University - Ireland (Republic)
"Munster Technological University’s multi-campus student entrepreneurship and innovation education team"
Engage on social media
@MTU_ie(Munster Technological University Twitter Account)
@Student_Inc_ie(Student Inc Twitter Account)
@rubiconcentre(MTU Rubicon Centre Twitter Account)
@MTUInnovate(MTU Innovation and Enterprise Office Twitter Account)
https://www.linkedin.com/school/munster-technological-university/?originalSubdomain=ie#(MTU LinkedIn Account)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/studentinc?originalSubdomain=ie(Student Inc LinkedIn Account)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/rubicon-centre?originalSubdomain=ie(MTU Rubicon Centre LinkedIn Account)
hhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/mtu-mechanical-biomedical-and-manufacturing-engineering/(MTU Department of Mechanical, Biomedical and Manufacturing Engineering LinkedIn Account)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cit-innovation-and-enterprise-office/?originalSubdomain=ie (MTU Innovation and Entreprise Office LinkedIn Account)
https://www.instagram.com/mtu_ie/?hl=en(MTU Instagram Account)
https://www.instagram.com/student_inc_ie/?hl=en(Student Inc Instagram Account)
https://www.instagram.com/rubiconcentre/(MTU Rubicon Centre Instagram Account)
https://www.instagram.com/mtu_studententerprise/(MTU Innovation and Enterprise Office Instagram Account)
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Summary
Key People
Carole O'Leary
Regional Programme Manager for 3rd Level Student Entrepreneurship
Innovation and Enterprise Office,
Munster Technological University
Dr Hugh O'Donnell
Biomedical Engineering Lecturer and Course Co-ordinator
Mechanical, Biomedical and Manufacturing Engineering Dept.,
Munster Technological University
Dr Paul Keane
Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Lecturer
Mechanical, Biomedical and Manufacturing Engineering Dept.,
Munster Technological University
Dr Breda O Dwyer
Head of Department, Organisational & Professional Development Department
Organisational & Professional Development Dept.,
Munster Technological University
Paul Healy
Innovation Centre Manager
MTU Rubicon Centre,
Munster Technological University
AnnMarie Barrett
Commercialisation Specialist
Innovation and Enterprise Office,
Munster Technological University
George Bulman
Operations Manager, Rubicon Centre
MTU Rubicon Centre,
Munster Technological University
Acknowledgements
The team would like to thank Emily Piggott, Student Enterprise Intern at the MTU Rubicon Centre, for her invaluable assistance in preparing this submission.
Images
Meet the MTU Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Team
Pat Lynch Mentoring Student Inc Participants
Dr Wendy Oke, CEO TeachKloud - Reflects on her Entrepreneurial Journey
Charley Cook Conlon - Affirms the Value of the Student Innovation/Entrepreneurship opportunities at MTU
Vincent Forde, CEO Gasgon Medical - Reflects on his Entrepreneurial Journey
Myles Murray, CEO PMD Solutions - Reflects on his Entrepreneurial Journey
Muireann Hickey - Outlines the Value to her Career of the Innovation and Entrepreneurial Skillset she Developed at MTU
Cormac and Jane - Student Innovators and Entrepreneurs
Our Team's Success at the 2024 Irish Education Awards
Student Entrepreneurship is Fun!
IMPACT STORY
Impacting lifesGasgon Medical is a company borne of the MTU innovation eco-system. The seeds were planted in the Mechanical Engineering Department and nurtured through the university's innovation supports. Its founder, Vincent Forde, comments; “As a young student of engineering I really had no idea how to scale a concept into a global organisation until the team at MTU recognised my early potential. They stepped in to provide everything needed to develop my business plan and grow my leadership capabilities. I had no business background but throughout my undergraduate degree I received incredible education, including several programs such as Innovative Product Development modules, the Innovation Challenge, Student Inc. and the MTU Innovation Awards. MTU provided mentorship, training and financial supports that were ideally crafted to meet my growing needs at the most critical early stage, solidifying my belief that I could make this business work. I was also encouraged to enter national and international awards that were critical to building my confidence. Leaving MTU, I felt like I could take on the world! Since graduating in 2018, my company has raised over €7 million in investment, growing a team in Ireland and USA to develop a range of medical devices and work with hospitals globally to impact the lives of millions of patients. I attribute much of our success to the energy, vision, and effective implementation of grass-roots entrepreneurship education by the MTU team. I am proud of my MTU incubation, without their exemplary innovation supports none of this would be possible”.
LEARNINGS
Lessons learned
Some of our key learning are as follows:
• Start small: While it is important to be innovative and ambitious in terms of the educational experiences you may want to provide to your students, we have found that it is best to start small and to increase student numbers and initiatives as your competency increases.
• Multidisciplinary is better: We have found that the best ideas and execution come from multidisciplinary groups of students. While engineering, science and business students are most likely to engage readily with our initiatives, other students from creative courses, healthcare courses and social care courses also have huge potential to contribute to innovation/entrepreneurship. While these students may require significant persuasion to recruit them for such initiatives, they are well worth the effort required in terms of what they contribute to interdisciplinary teams.
• Embed Entrepreneurship in programmes: In order to optimise the number of students that we connect with, we run extra-curricular innovation/entrepreneurship programmes. It takes significant effort to recruit students to these initiatives and, for optimal participation, it is probably best, where possible, to embed these initiatives as mandatory modules in programmes.
• Competitions and Prizes: Nothing like competitions and (especially!) prizes to enthuse students and get them to engage.
• Advertise your success to students and wider society using the appropriate social media.
• Bring in external expertise to expose students (and staff) to new ideas and approaches to innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Find willing collaborators across your organisation who you can work with and who will champion your initiatives.
FUTURE PLANS
What's coming?
One of the primary future objectives of our team is to continue to build on our success in increasing the number of entry points for students onto our innovation/entrepreneurship initiatives. We will continue to develop our initiatives to recruit students (who may not have innovation/entrepreneurship as a core part of their academic programmes) onto elements such as the Innovation Challenge and Student Inc. We will also continue to strongly promote our initiatives to the wider student body and to highlight to them the contribution that they could make to project teams while emphasising the significant value that engagement with these initiatives can deliver to them in terms of their career development.
Further internationalisation of the initiatives is also an ongoing objective. For example, our Innovative Product Development modules (which are delivered entirely online) will, from September, include students from the European Ingenium University alliance of which MTU is a member and also students from our partner university in Kenya. Our Innovation Challenge initiative already hosts students from the Ingenium alliance and Endicott College in Massachusetts. Working in multidisciplinary, multinational teams on innovation/entrepreneurship projects provides huge opportunities and benefits to the students involved and is also hugely beneficial to the professional development of staff delivering these initiatives.
In terms of the MTU Innovation Challenge, we will continue to recruit more companies from diverse industries to provide the student groups with a wider variety of “challenges”. This, in turn, will allow us to attract students from a wider range of programmes.
