Entrepreneurship Webinars

The Global Entrepreneurship Exchange (GE2) at UMass Lowell is collaborating with the Indo Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) for an exciting webinar series which focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation, and education. Since its launch in 2019, we have offered 36 webinars to entrepreneurship faculty around the globe. With your input, we are pleased to expand the Webinars to include topics that will be very informative and useful to students, faculty, and aspiring entrepreneurs. We continue to welcome your suggestions on topics to include and invite faculty and entrepreneurs to share their teaching experiences. These webinars are free, and anyone can attend.

For more information please contact Bill Yelle by email: William_Yelle@uml.edu.

View our webinar recordings.

Webinars-On-DemandWebinars On Demand

WebinarecordingsIf you can't attend the live webinar, recordings of the webinars are available to watch on demand, see below.

How Leagile Strategy and Strategic Partnership Affect Competitive Advantage of Construction Supply Chains in a Developing Economy

Presenter: Zachary Awino, Ph.D., Professor at the Faculty of Business and Management Science, University of Nairobi

Co-Presenter: Grace Georgine Oyombe, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Nairobi

The webinar explores a study aimed at answering the confronting question: What strategy should be followed to alleviate the myriad problems facing the construction supply chains in a developing economy like Kenya. Therefore, the study assessed the influence of leagile strategy and strategic partnership on competitive advantage of construction supply chains in Nairobi City County.

There is rapid growth in the construction industry and the government of Kenya has heavily invested in the sector. However, the construction companies are confronted with countless problems comprising low competitiveness, inefficiencies, and poor performance. Many projects experience delayed completion, lack of quality assurance, collapse of buildings, rushed orders, long lead times, and last-minute changes in specifications and delivery times, culminating in consumer dissatisfaction.

This topic is presented into two parts:

1. Prof. Awino presents the linkages of strategic partnership, leagile strategy, competitive advantage and supply chains, the theoretical perspectives, conceptual overview and the supporting literature.
2. Grace Oyombe, a Ph.D. candidate, presents the empirical evidence based on Professor Awino's submission on the construction industry context. She also provides a critical analysis of her findings in relation to the previous studies as they appear in the literature review.

Perspectives on a Cashless Consumer Economy

Presenter: Spencer Ross, Associate Professor, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell

In contemporary marketplaces, it often seems as though the resilience of cash has come into question. Though personal checks and atm and credit cards have been around for decades, the proliferation of fintech has rapidly and radically changed the nature of how consumers make payments. In this talk, I draw on my various ongoing research projects to discuss how digitalizing payments is transforming these behaviors, from Venmo-ing donations to street performers to using cryptocurrency to buy NFTs in web3 marketplaces. Of particular note is how cashless economies may affect vulnerable consumers and strengthen the case for cash, after all.

AbbVie's Approach to Innovation via Venture Investing

Presenter: Charles Kunsch, Managing Director, AbbVie Ventures

In this webinar, Charles Kunsch provides insight into AbbVie’s approach for corporate venture investing.

Entrepreneurship in China

Presenter: Jianmin Sun, Ph.D.

Entrepreneurship has proven to be particularly important in developing countries such as China, where new venture creation and the SME sector have fueled a significant portion of China’s growth.

For much of the past century, entrepreneurship and China were seldom mentioned together. Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, offering a product, process or service for sale or hire, and the people who do so are called 'entrepreneurs'. In the 21st century, the definition of "entrepreneurship" has been expanded to explain how and why some individuals (or teams) identify opportunities, evaluate them as viable, and then decide to exploit them, whereas others do not. In addition, how entrepreneurs use these opportunities to develop new products or services, launch new firms or even new industries and create wealth.

This webinar explores how entrepreneurs navigate China’s challenging environment in terms of the institutional regime, the effect on economic development and employment, and the complexity of financing.

Spinning Out Academic Science & Raising Capital in a Pandemic: FireCyte Case Study

Presenter: William Yelle

FireCyte is an emerging biotechnology company developing novel treatment strategies that address neurodegenerative diseases of the eye. The underlying scientific underpinnings of the company are based on work conducted at the Schepen’s Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital. The company was co-founded by Scientific Founder Dong Feng Chen and Bill Yelle, CEO.

During the presentation, Bill describes the company formation process and takes you on a journey starting at when the co-founders first met through a successful $12 MM seed financing and the establishment of a physical presence in an incubator. As part of the presentation, a variety of subjects are addressed, including the intersection of science and market need, venture planning, establishing an operational framework and fund-raising. In addition, how the process was facilitated by a university-based system.

Mass Medical Device Development Center (M2D2): The Role of an Incubator in Fostering Innovation

Presenter: Mary Ann Picard, Executive Director for Innovation, Mass Medical Device Development Center (M2D2)

The mission of M2D2 is to act as a lifeline for medical device, life sciences and biotech start-ups. The goal is to provide start-ups with a vibrant innovation ecosystem and access to world-class facilities, industry and academic experts, and a vast array of resources to provide path from proof of concept through to commercialization. M2D2 contributes to economic development in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is a joint program between UMass Lowell and UMass Medical School. There are a total of 3 separate facilities providing infrastructure to start-ups, including equipment and resources. In addition to administrative assistance, members receive lab personnel and lab operations support. Mentoring and assistance with federal grant programs is also provided.

Social Entrepreneurship as a Tool for Development

Social entrepreneurship is increasingly being recognized as a powerful tool for development. However, because of their double bottom-line, social, and economic goals, social entrepreneurs must deal with a high degree of complexity to achieve the two, sometimes incompatible, missions of their firms. Nevertheless, in locations where the formal institutional environment is too weak to help alleviate poverty, the social enterprise might be the only real possibility to help alleviate poverty. Thus, in this presentation, I describe how social enterprises operating in a developing country have been able to align different goals to decrease tensions between their double-bottom line to help impoverished communities in a developing country.

The Path from Invention to Innovation

Carl Berke shares his insights gained from two decades of experience in “larval stage” venture financing of aspiring biomedical enterprise. Focus is on setting future entrepreneur’s expectations and preparing them for “how it works” in the real world to advance from ideation to commercialization.

Lone Entrepreneur Syndrome: A Call to Action

According to research performed by The Silicon Valley Laboratory (The SV Lab), over 40% to 50% of entrepreneurs have Lone Entrepreneur Syndrome (LES). During this talk, Rowland Chen, founder of The Silicon Valley Laboratory, will discuss issues contributing to LES such as an entrepreneur being in love with her/his own product and having an unrealistic goal for a firm’s valuation. Not every start-up can become a unicorn with a billion-dollar (US) valuation. Not only will LES be described, the presentation will cover practical approaches to overcome issues that are barriers to a venture’s success. The SV Lab bases its work in LES on experiences coaching hundreds of independent inventors, independent entrepreneurs, and chief executive officers of early-stage companies Key takeaways: a practitioner’s point-of-view on barriers to venture success, tools and methods to help aspiring entrepreneurs as well as experienced ones, and The Silicon Valley Laboratory’s unique approach to firm valuation.

Designing Subscription Business Models

Subscription business models are changing the way that Americans consume software, music, movies, television, fitness, clothing, and food. Even tractor maker Deere or carmakers GM and Volvo are trying to sell subscriptions to consumers. Venture capital firms and public investors tend to also invest more money into this new model. In our study, we found that subscription business models have design rules in customer-orientation, inter-functional coordination, and digitalization. In an analysis of new venture viability during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also find that changes in shareholder value, firm risk, and severity of loss with subscription business models are less, compared with rivals. We also introduce some teaching tools to inspire our students to identify the customer's “job-to-be-done”, to map recurring payments, and to pitch the model to investors.

Unlearning Academia and Embracing Entrepreneurship

Presenter: Sridhar Iyengar, CEO, Elemental Machines

Once an avid academic, Elemental Machines CEO Sridhar Iyengar learned the norms of entrepreneurship by fire. In this discussion, Sridhar will discuss how to commercialize the fruits of an academic lab and recount the lessons he had to unlearn when transitioning from academia to entrepreneurship, including:

• The concept of selling something that doesn’t yet exist
• Why people buy cars for their cupholders
• The reality that tech isn’t everything
• Why innovation can be as simple as a new name
• How fairy tales can be more valuable than business books

Workforce Ecosystems: A Strategic Approach to the Future of Work

Presenter: Elizabeth J. Altman D.B.A., UMass Lowell

Organizations’ workforce agendas no longer revolve solely around hiring employees to perform work along linear career paths. Workforces today comprise a range of internal and external contributors including employees, contractors, gig workers, professional service providers, application developers, crowdsourced contributors, and others. Organizations recognize that they need to adopt an integrated approach to effectively manage these complex workforces. However, significant challenges remain and best practices are scarce to address strategic and operational issues associated with workforces that span organizational boundaries. In this webinar, we will discuss the definition and characteristics of workforce ecosystems, structures that consist of interdependent actors from within and outside an organization. We will also consider the implications of workforce ecosystems for management practices and policy considerations. This webinar will draw from a multi-year research program led by MIT Sloan Management Review in conjunction with Deloitte Consulting focused on the Future of the Workforce.

Where to Play: Finding your New Growth Opportunities in a More Systematic Manner

Presenter: Marc Gruber, Ph.D.

College of Management of Technology at EPFL, Switzerland

Many studies have shown that the #1 reason why startups fail is lack of market need. In this webinar, Marc will introduce the Market Opportunity Navigator - which is the 4th tool in the lean startup toolset and featured in his book (with Sharon Tal) entitled "Where to Play". Using plenty of examples Marc will show how this easy-to-use tool can help entrepreneurs and innovators to figure out how to identify great market opportunities, discover additional ones, and create a company that is more flexible in case it has to pivot to another market domain.

Global Ethics: What Should Aspiring Entrepreneurs Know

Presenter: Jose Godinez, Ph.D., UMass Lowell

Ethics plays a key role in any business, particularly in new ones. Large and established businesses – especially those operating in developed countries – have established ethical codes and practices mainly due to regulatory and normative pressures. However, entrepreneurs in new businesses might not have yet established ethical programs. In this webinar, we will discuss the importance of business ethics with special emphasis on entrepreneurs. We will also analyze the most important aspects of sound business ethics programs that entrepreneurs should consider when growing their ventures.

EforAll: Turning Dreams into Businesses

Presenter: Sophan Smith '02, Executive Director EforAll

How can entrepreneurship benefit the ecosystem in your community? In this presentation, learn how EforAll is accelerating economic and social impact in communities nationwide through inclusive entrepreneurship. Since its first business accelerator training program, over 700 businesses were started by EforAll alumni with 70% still active and in business today. Now more than ever, we understand the disparities of BIPOC entrepreneurs, the lack of resources, access and opportunities for starting and sustaining a business. EforAll is positioned to level the playing field by providing services in the community at no cost to the entrepreneurs.

Corporate Venture Capital: Current Trends and Research

Presenter: Yi Yang, Ph.D.

Corporate venture capital (CVC) refers to equity investments from non-financial corporation in entrepreneurial companies for both financial and strategic purposes. Such investment activities have been flourishing in the United States, as well as other parts of the world, over the last several decades. As one manifestation of corporate entrepreneurship, CVC activities are viewed as an effective means for technology innovation that facilitate both corporate investors and their investee startups to better respond to environmental changes. This webinar reviews the current trends in global CVC activities, and discuss how technological relationships between corporate investors and their investee startups could evolve through CVC activities and eventually impact technology innovation outcomes and firm performance.

Essays on Disruptive Technology Adoption

Presenter Michael Obal discusses relevant literature on the emergence of disruptive technologies and covers three essays on their adoption amongst businesses. The first essay examines the influence of pre-adoption buyer-supplier trust on adoption intent and highlights how incumbents can survive when new technologies disrupt an industry. Essay two focuses on the antecedents of a quality adoption decision of a disruptive technology, highlighting the fact that adopting the most cutting-edge technology may not always be the right decision. The third essay looks at the influence of employee motives, especially sales force members, on the acceptance and integration of a disruptive technology into the business.

Crossing the Valley of Death: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Commercialization at Tufts University

Presenter: Kevin Oye, Executive Director, Tufts Gordon Institute

The results of fundamental and applied research generated by universities often have little to no impact on society. Why? In many cases, the research both contributes to our fundamental knowledge and understanding, and provides a foundation for innovations that could benefit society. Unfortunately, there is often a gap between the research result, and the translation of the findings into a solution to a societal problem, along with a business and financial model that is investable.

At Tufts, we’ve been building our innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem with specific programs focused on accelerating the translation of research to commercialization, including launching a new MS in Innovation and Management that targets recent STEM graduates and in an intensive one year full time program, ignites and incubates all the skills necessary to launch ventures. This talk will share this program, and how it fits into the overall commercialization ecosystem at Tufts.

Remote Work Changing the Landscape for Talent

In a flip of a switch, the pandemic accelerated remote and decentralized work arrangements. For many, especially tech and knowledge workers, the shift appears here to stay. A recent survey by venture capitalist firm Initialized suggests the top location for high-tech startups is in the cloud with workers connecting remotely. What does it mean when Silicon Valley is no longer a physical location and talented workers are geographically untethered?

We’ll review this trend and its implications for attracting and retaining talent. Research conducted in conjunction with my research team, David Greenway and Tamara Montag-Smit, shows workers hold three distinct levels of remote-work expectations. Most intriguing is an emerging creative class of workers that choose to thrive in an individualized location of their choosing versus a prescribed creative hub. Communities and companies alike are competing for these workers. Possibly you are or aspire to be one of these workers. I look forward to sharing this timely knowledge with you and hearing your experience.

The Future of Work and the Reskilling Revolution

Industry workforce needs are rapidly evolving as the future of work unfolds. The future of work – the notion that disruptive technologies, such as robotics, block chain, and artificial intelligence – will alter the structure and nature of work in unprecedented ways. In the next two decades, the economy will witness wide scale labor displacement across industry sectors from retail to healthcare, from biotech to financial services; no sector will be untouched by this next industrial revolution. Industry leaders anticipate a rapidly emerging skills mismatch between the skills that workers currently have and the skills that will be necessary to tackle this new world of work. In response to the pending crisis, policymakers, business leaders, and economists are calling for a ‘reskilling revolution’ to help individuals adapt to the future of work. What are the skills that people will need to adapt to the future of work? We will provide guidance from the emerging research.

Family Business '21 - Managing Global Innovation through Investments

Family business historically represents approximately 80% of the worldwide economy. Whether an active Gen 1 or Gen "N" family member in Mumbai, London, or Boston, or contemplating joining your family-owned enterprise, the presenter, Patrick Abouchalache (entrepreneur, investor, professor, mentor) will dive deeper into constantly evolving global family, business, and investment demands.

Startup Business Pitch Competition - What Makes a Winning Pitch

In her talk, Startup Business Pitch Competition - What Makes a Winning Pitch, Barbara Russell discusses her extensive experience in judging a vast number of pitch competitions around the world, as well as coaching and teaching entrepreneurship, and offers invaluable tips to inspire entrepreneurs in embracing the basics of how to create a killer PPT presentation and go on to WIN a pitch competition. Critical to this process is to understand what it is that pitch competition judges want to hear, and how do you appeal to their mindset, to their expectations, AND, most importantly for the long-haul: acquiring these skills that will be essential in effectively communicating your offering to investors, customers, and the world at large! Part of this process is to review pitch deck examples, and some VERY FAMOUS ONES (LinkedIn, Uber, YouTube). Some are fantastic while others, (and surprisingly, some really successful ones at that) are downright awful! Reviewing these decks is eye-opening and creates a great learning pathway to determine what “good” means by acquiring the ability to identify the good, the bad, and the ugly.

High Impact Entrepreneurial Bootcamp for STEM Ph.D./Postdocs

The Morgridge Entrepreneurial Bootcamp at University of Wisconsin-Madison is an intense weeklong program for STEM graduate/post-doc students. This session focuses on the best practices, measures and lessons learned in creating a high impact program that scales and aligns with the unique needs of this student population. This program has been attended by more than 700 STEM graduate/post-doc students over the past 14 years. The program participants give it a Net Promoter Score >90 and alumni have gone on to start numerous companies and raise >$180M in funding. This webinar will discuss the best practices we have learned over the years. This will include: key design attributes, techniques to attract students from traditionally underrepresented groups, opportunities to engage the campus/potential donors and key metrics.

Zen and the Art of Starting Up a Start-up

In his talk, Zen and the Art of Starting Up a Start-up, Chesley Chen, a serial entrepreneur, shares true stories from his 10,000-day journey through the working world. Using real life examples, he presents start-up topics such as how to start with a great idea, discover your business model, create a minimum viable product, listen to your customers, assemble your business from scratch, lead your team, generate revenue, raise money, and make money…all while keeping your zen.

Entrepreneurial Orientation and New Venture Success

There is an increasing shift from the myth of the “lonely hero entrepreneur” to the “collective nature of entrepreneurship”. Understanding and leveraging the team’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO) assumes critical importance to enhance venture success. EO is vital because it is well-suited to dealing with pressures arising from both a rapidly changing external environment and a natural internal tendency towards inflexibility and inertia as organizations increase in size. This webinar provided a brief overview of current research trends in the field of entrepreneurial orientation and insights on key dimensions to focus on while supporting new venture pursuits of student startup teams as well as nascent ventures housed in incubators.

Post-Covid Supply Chains: Is Blockchain Technology a Solution?

The webinar discussed challenges associated with traditional supply chains and how it has become more complicated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It explored the potential of using Blockchain Technology to address these issues. The Covid-10 pandemic has interrupted many supply chains. Suppliers and customers stopped doing business, and shipping lines and airlines drastically reduced their capacities. On top of that, social distancing required a change of operational practice for the part of the supply chain that still worked. Changes in supply chain operations were adapted to less personal interaction to avoid the risk of spreading the disease, and centuries-old practices, such as paper-based transport documents, saw increased change towards e-documents. This actually increased efficiency, and offers opportunities for entrepreneurs worldwide who embrace the new ways of doing business. How to make technology secure from hackers? Could the future be in Blockchain Technology? What would be the advantages, and can Blockchain Technology reduce our vulnerability to such threats in the future? Can entrepreneurs get onto blockchains, or is this only for large multinationals?

Creating and Sustaining an Advisory Board: A Key Success Factor for an Entrepreneur

This webinar discussed essentials of advisory boards and compared with governance boards. It highlighted how important an advisory board is to a start up venture. In the beginning, an entrepreneur’s journey is often very lonely. Even if two or more entrepreneurs are working as a team to coordinate their ideas, they need some additional perspectives, including mentoring, advice, and guidance. This webinar provided helpful points on creating, implementing and sustaining an advisory board.

Topic: Creating An Agile Mindset and Innovation

This webinar discussed traditional approaches and processes for innovation and change management need to be questioned in this era of the pandemic. There is an urgent need to generate effective solutions rapidly and at lower costs. In other words, there is an urgent need for agility and for out of the box solutions to solve problems organizations are facing today. In this session we describe the agile mindset and contrast with the traditional mindset when it comes to solving a problem. The Presenter provided a few case scenarios of how an organization willing to embrace an agile mindset can deliver results in “half the time” and at “half the cost”.

Topic: Multidisciplinary Entrepreneurship Capstone: A Case Study

This webinar discussed UMass Lowell experience in developing and implementing a Business-STEM Capstone course. In 2015, UMass Lowell Manning School of Business and the Francis College of Engineering launched a pilot of a multidisciplinary capstone course for their students. This course is now offered each semester to Business Seniors and Engineering Juniors/Seniors. This webinar discussed the course evolution, current status, student testimonials and recommendations to develop such a multidisciplinary course. It discussed importance of such a joint multidisciplinary entrepreneurship capstone course and challenges in developing and making it a standard offer. The webinar also addressed the importance of an entrepreneurship ecosystem that complements academic programs.

Topic: CRM: Teaching Students how to Acquire, Retain and Grow Customers

In this webinar, the speaker discussed key functions of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, the major industry players, and the key CRM products from Salesforce.

A CRM tool is an important asset for an entrepreneur to create a longer lasting relationship with their customers; webinar touched on key functions such as sales, marketing and service, as well as how to teach entrepreneurship students.

Topic: Entrepreneurship Team Building and Management

In this webinar Michael Ciuchta, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Manning School of Business discusses his research and class practices on how to create a venture, how to select, how to establish roles & responsibilities, equity and compensation and many other very relevant topics.

An Entrepreneurship team is considered to be the most critical factor in successfully launching, building and growing a venture.

Team functional and social considerations affect largely as an entrepreneur is ready to pursue their ideas.

Topic: New Venture Financing in Emerging AI Technology

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) to drive economic growth and improve quality of life has ushered in a new AI arms race. Investments of risk capital fuel this emerging technology.

In this webinar, the presenter discusses the role that venture capital (VC) and corporate investments of risk capital play in the emergence of AI-related technologies.

Furthermore, he discusses how a new measure of firm-level knowledge coupling can be used to explore how knowledge coupling influences VC risk capital decisions in emerging AI technologies. The presenter discussing his research in this area, observes that knowledge coupling is a better predictor of VC investment in emerging technologies than the breadth of a patent’s technological domains.

He further concludes from his research that there are differences in knowledge coupling between private start-ups and public corporations. These findings enhance our understanding of what types of AI innovations are more likely to be selected by VCs and have important implications for our understanding of how risk capital induces the emergence of new technologies.

Topic: Teaching Social Entrepreneurship: Encouraging Students to Address Social Challenges

This webinar discussed a very interesting topic of Social Entrepreneurship, over 280 attendees from many countries attended the webinar. Presenters discussed significant growth in social entrepreneurship activities around the globe, followed by presentation of new significant scholarly research and how to teach social innovation and entrepreneurship. The Webinar discussed how to use business model generation & canvas, design thinking, social value generation, and story-telling in social entrepreneurship. It further discussed how STEM students can think about solving social and environmental problems through design thinking, especially on empathizing from the stories and iterating in prototype. The COVID-19 pandemic today further calls us to have “a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty” (Banerjee and Duflo, 2011).

Topic: Combining Engineering Design and Entrepreneurial Mindset Learning: Teaching Entrepreneurship to STEM Students

This webinar presented a case study of how to create an Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) in engineering students. EM has been defined as the set of attitudes, skills, and behaviors needed by students to succeed academically, personally, and professionally. It is the ability to see opportunities, marshal resources, and create value which are of high demand in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Developing the entrepreneurial mindset requires a combination of critical developmental experiences and a well-coordinated combination of personal reflection, peer support, and expert mentoring. The webinar provided an overview of an approach incorporating these key elements, to develop the entrepreneurial mindset in engineering undergraduate students through a two-semester design lab course.

Topic: Art -Engineering Collaboration: Enhancing Entrepreneurial Opportunities

This webinar resented a case study of how Arts and Engineering students collaborate to develop new ventures. While STEM students and graduates can be very proficient in developing technological systems, they are often limited in their abilities to successfully convert these inventions into innovative products that are commercially successful through entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurial activities require teamwork as well as the ability to work with both internal and external team members who are not in the engineering or scientific fields. In order to develop the entrepreneurial capabilities of STEM students and graduates, it therefore becomes imperative to create entrepreneurial opportunities for them to work with teams from different but critical disciplines like the art and business. Presenters discussed their approach to creating a collaborative class between Arts and Engineering students. Arts students served as “consultants” to engineering students in developing communication and promotion strategies.

Topic: Social Media: Creating New Possibilities for Entrepreneurs

This webinar discussed how different social media platforms have evolved in last 20 years and revolutionized marketing across all industries. It’s an understatement to say that social media is an essential staple of marketing communications in 2019. For many companies, the obvious strategy is to be on all available platforms, yet this is not always the most cost effective nor cost efficient strategy; it is often more strategic to create the right content for the right market on the right platform. This webinar provided a basic primer to social interaction on social networks, to social media business strategies, and to the core differentiating features of common social media platforms.

Watch the Social Media: Creating New Possibilities for Entrepreneurs webinar.

Topic: Biomimicry: New ways to Foster Innovation & Entrepreneurship

This webinar discussed how entrepreneurs are using creative and new approaches, such as, Biomimicry. The presenter discussed this emerging discipline, provided a way of looking to nature for design inspiration and problem-solving to create breakthrough and sustainable solutions. The discussion highlighted how innovations are happening across multiple disciplines and industries from architecture, engineering to social innovation using nature’s models and strategies. It also gave suggestions on how entrepreneurship and innovation teachers can use in the classroom to motivate students to go beyond traditional thinking.

Watch the Biomimicry: New ways to Foster Innovation & Entrepreneurship webinar.

Topic: Big Data and Business Analytics

In the recent decades, we have observed an explosion of electronic data that is generated and collected by individuals, business organizations, and governments. The amount of data in the world increases exponentially each year. This rapid growth in data has created the problem of data overload. The technology to analyze and interpret massive data has lagged behind the technology to collect and store data. There has been an urgent need for new data analytics techniques and tools that can extract useful information and knowledge from the mountains of data for managerial decision-making. This webinar discusses Big Data and Business Analytics and how it is taught in our MS in Business Analytics program at the Manning School.

Watch the Big Data and Business Analytics webinar.

Topic: Crowd Funding: Research and Practices

Michael Ciuchta Associate Professor Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Innovation Department at University of Massachusetts Lowell discussed importance of crowd funding to a startup entrepreneur, what are trends and how he teaches this topic in his class.

Watch the Crowd Funding: Research and Practices webinar.

Topic: Entrepreneurship Ecosystem at KLE India

Nitin Kulkarni Director of CTIE KLE Technological University Hubli India discussed a robust entrepreneurship ecosystem established at their university. It has become a model for universities in India to develop such ecosystem on their campuses.

Watch the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem at KLE India webinar.

Topic: Technological Entrepreneurship: Trends and Teaching

This webinar discussed importance of learning and latest trends in technological entrepreneurship. Due to an explosive growth in tech-based entrepreneurship, teaching it becomes a very critical task for any educator. Based on his vast experience as an entrepreneur and an educator, Wilson provided a very interesting discussion.

Watch the Technological Entrepreneurship: Trends and Teaching webinar.

Topic: Case Study: UMass Lowell’s Innovation Hubs & Venture Incubators

Presenter: Thomas O'Donnell

This webinar explored best practices in the planning, operations and strategic management of innovation hubs and venture incubators. It touched on key milestones in successful operations from early strategic planning considerations, fundraising & resource development, initial launch & ramp up and ongoing operations & expansion. The webinar emphasized important elements to successful incubator operations including development of a sustainable financial model, marketing & outreach to key stakeholders (including members, partners, sponsors and community supporters), program & event planning and overall management of community & stakeholder relationships.

Watch the Case Study UMass Lowell’s Innovation Hubs & Venture Incubators webinar.

Topic: Case Study: Student Idea Contest, an Integral Part of Entrepreneurship Education & Ecosystem

Presenters: Holly Lalos (nee Butler), Ha Pho

This webinar discussed methods and materials used to develop and deploy a student entrepreneurship program across campus. DifferenceMaker® is a UMass Lowell campus-wide program that engages students of all majors and disciplines in creative problem-solving, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Since inception in 2012, over 30,000 students have participated in DifferenceMaker activities and programs. These activities include freshman orientation, college-based competitions, the $50,000 Idea Challenge, a Mentor Program, Boot Camp, and more. The webinar discussed best practices for deploying DifferenceMaker on any campus.

Watch the Case Study: Student Idea Contest, an Integral Part of Entrepreneurship Education & Ecosystem webinar.

Topic: Global Entrepreneurship Exchange: Expanding Young Minds to Solve Small and Big Problems

Presenters: Professor Yi Yang, Professor Michael Ciuchta, Professor Sun Li, Professor Ashwin Mehta

This webinar introduced University of Massachusetts Lowell's strategic academic program, Global Entrepreneurship Exchange (GE2). Discussions included its major components: total immersive multicultural & interdisciplinary workshops, faculty training, and improving students' experiences. It introduced entrepreneurship education, curriculum, pedagogy, and co-curricular activities.

Watch the Global Entrepreneurship Exchange: Expanding Young Minds to Solve Small and Big Problems webinar.

Topic: Teaching Entrepreneurship: Developing Curious and Questioning Minds

Presenters: Professor Yi Yang, Professor Michael Ciuchta, Professor Sun Li, Professor Ashwin Mehta

This webinar discussed UMass Lowell's approach to educating young minds. Specifically, it discussed what we teach, how we engage students, and how we implement experiential learning.

Watch the Teaching Entrepreneurship: Developing Curious and Questioning Minds webinar.

Topic: Case Study: Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

Presenter: Professor Steven Tello

This Webinar discusses the roles played by the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Middlesex Community College, the Deshpande Foundation and other civic, business and community partners in supporting the emergence of a sustainable, entrepreneurial ecosystem in the postindustrial mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts. We consider the challenges faced in attracting entrepreneurs, talent and capital to a multi-ethnic city recovering from the Great Recession of 2008, while the entrepreneurial tech hub of Boston was beginning to boom only 40 miles south of Lowell.

Watch the Case Study: Entrepreneurship Ecosystem webinar.