| About CIE
ENTREPRENEURSHIP is a dynamic union of innovation and opportunity, passion and vision, risk and reward. The Center for Innovation and
Entrepreneurship was created in 1991 to inspire entrepreneurial thinking and provide the resources that enable University of Washington students and
faculty to bring their entrepreneurial ambitions to life.
HISTORY
The University of Washington Business School was one of the first in the country to begin teaching entrepreneurship courses in the mid-1970s. Professor Karl Vesper, known as the “father of entrepreneurship education,” was part of a national cohort of faculty who worked to promote teaching entrepreneurship. Vesper also founded the entrepreneurship division of the Academy of Management.
The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) began as the Program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (PEI) in 1991, offering an entrepreneurship curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students in the University of Washington Business School. PEI launched the High-Tech Entrepreneurship Speaker Series in 1997, organized the first state-wide Business Plan Competition in 1998, created a campus-wide Technology Entrepreneurship Certificate program in 2002, and grew the student entrepreneurship club to more than 200 members across campus by 2003.
PEI was renamed the Center for Technology
Entrepreneurship briefly, with a focus on technology commercialization.
While technology innovation remains an important component
of the program, the Center returned to its focus on the broad
range of entrepreneurship in late 2005.
MISSION
The mission of the center is to integrate entrepreneurship into the fabric of the University of Washington and, by extension, into the larger
Northwest community. To accomplish this goal, CIE offers:
Interdisciplinary Curriculum. Undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students—from business and law to computer science and
bioengineering—can enroll in the center’s courses or certificate
programs. CIE’s From Invention to Start-Up seminar series is the first to
target the university’s science and research faculty who have an interest in venture creation.
Real-World Focus. Every class in the entrepreneurship
curriculum, from “Creating a Company” to “Entrepreneurial Finance,” focuses on opportunity, uncertainty, and change. The
center’s Business Plan Competition, which is open to students from around the state and judged by
Northwest entrepreneurs, provides more than $70,000 in seed capital to the winning teams. CIE is one of only a handful of centers in the nation to offer a
PhD in technology entrepreneurship, helping prepare the next generation of
entrepreneurship faculty.
Relevant Research. The annual West
Coast Research Symposium on Technology Entrepreneurship is sponsored by the CIE, in conjunction with Stanford University, the University of Southern California,
the University of Oregon, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The two-day symposium and doctoral consortium attracts researchers in the field of technology entrepreneurship from across the United States
and internationally.
Collaboration and Outreach. The Entrepreneurial
Law Clinic brings MBAs and law students together to perform legal and business audits for early-stage Northwest start-ups. And in
LaunchPad, UW TechTransfer managers identify those technologies that have commercial
potential and bring in outside advisors and CIE student teams to do feasibility analyses.
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