Broadening participation in entrepreneurship is an important topic and critical challenge that continues to gain attention and intervention programs within the STEM entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, the challenges of people of color in STEM entrepreneurship are amplified in technology intensive and the high-growth space of STEM innovation. Researchers, practitioners, academic scholars, and policy-makers have focused on training entrepreneurs of color in an inclusive way that considers both similarities and the uniqueness of the individuals that may be interested in a career as an entrepreneur. The National Science Foundation I-Corps is one such training program. Established in 2012, the I-Corps program brings NSF-funded researchers and industry expert together in an entrepreneurship and innovation training course. The expectation is that the training will lead to a growth in the translation of “deep tech” and in the creation of entrepreneurial ventures. The I-Corps program consists of both regional training as well as a national training program. Participation in the national program requires the formation of a team that consists of a Technical Lead, Entrepreneurial Lead, and a Business Mentor. Under-represented Groups (URGs) and women participation in I-Corps has been relatively low since inception. In this paper, we use survey data to explore the relationship amongst the differing roles and their perception as a participant in the national I-Corps training program. We consider demographics and gender identity to explore the experiences of the National I-Corps program participants. Additionally, we explore the impact of the engagement of the I-Corps staff with the participants and the perception of inclusivity and biasness within the training program.
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APPLYING A ‘MENTOR-PROTEGE’ APPROACH TO BROADENING PARTICIPATION OF HBCUS IN THE NATIONAL INNOVATION NETWORK
Innovation is one of the most important drivers of economic growth, yet only 8% of minorities,12% of women, and < 0.05% of African Americans are recognized as innovators. However, acomprehensive analysis of nearly all doctoral dissertations from 1977 to 2015 shows that although individuals from under-represented minority groups demonstrated greater scientific innovation, their contributions are rarely further adopted compared to equally impactful contributions by majority groups. In this instance “rarely further adopted,” as noted by Hofstra et al. (1), means that the “novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups.” Access to the wealth of potential innovations — going largely unnoticed and underutilized — from under-represented minority groups can be achieved, in part, by engaging science and engineering students, faculty, and staff at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in entrepreneurship through the use of the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) curriculum with adaptations to fit the education and research environments at HBCUs. A consortium of three North Carolina universities and the NYC Regional InnovationNetwork (NYCRIN) I-Corps Node established a partnership developing a specialized Lean LaunchPad training program for HBCU students, faculty, and staff. Implementation followeda three-step train-the-trainers ‘mentor-protege’ model, where new instructors ‘see one, do one, be one’ while learning to deliver the curriculum. The overarching goals of this initiativeare to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in broadening participation in I-Corps and mainstreaming the innovation capacities of HBCUs. The authors include instructors from the collaborating institutions, who trained and served as the teaching team for regional and national cohorts. Included are the rationale for creating the program, partnership selection,instructor and team recruitment, best practices for the ‘mentor-protege’ model, and outcomes for the cohorts. This contribution is a unique opportunity for other faculty to learn from practitioners about the challenges and successes involved in creating such a new multi-institutional entrepreneurship training paradigm.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10383223
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Technology & Innovation
- Volume:
- 22
- ISSN:
- 1949-8241
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-15
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.21300/22.3.2022.9
