The document discusses a senior capstone project at Michigan Technological University that requires business students to spend a full year working with an engineering senior design or enterprise team, acting as consultants to develop a business plan for bringing their technical project to market. It provides examples of past and current projects, outlines the course requirements, and identifies challenges such as communicating across disciplines and accessing necessary technical and market information. The goal is to provide an authentic industry experience for developing viable business recommendations and plans to commercialize student engineering projects.

1. Business Development Experience:
A Senior Capstone Project for Business Students using
Emerging Technologies from Engineering
Darrell Radson
Dean
School of Business and Economics

2. Michigan

3. Michigan

4. Michigan Technological University

5. Michigan Technological University
• Year founded: 1885
• City Population: 14,000, including our sister city of Hancock, Michigan
• Campus Size: 925-acre campus—about a ten-minute walk from one end to
the other—plus a 4,500-acre research forest

6. Engineering Education

7. Business Education
• Capstone Course??

8. Senior Capstone:
Business Development Experiences
Formally: two courses:
• BUS 4991 - Business Development I Focuses on the development of a
business plan including marketing plans, organization, distribution, and
financial projections. Emphasis is on the senior design project or
enterprise project assigned to the student. Credits: 3.0 Lec-Rec-Lab: (0-3-0) Semesters Offered: Fall
Pre-Requisite(s): (BA 1100 or BUS 1100) and (BA 2110 or BUS 2300) and (BA 2300 or BA 2330 or ACC 2000) and (BA 2310 or BA 2340 or ACC
2100) and (BA 2500 or BUS 2200) and (BA 2700 or MGT 2000) and (BA 3200 or MIS 2000) and (BA 3400 or FIN 3000) and (BA 3610 or OSM
3000) and (BA 3700 or MGT 3000) and (BA 3800 or MKT 3000)
• BUS 4992 - Business Development II Completion and presentation of the
business plan for the senior design project or enterprise project assigned
to the student. Credits: 3.0 Lec-Rec-Lab: (0-3-0) Semesters Offered: Spring Pre-Requisite(s): BA 4991

9. College of Engineering
Senior Design

10. Enterprise Program

11. Enterprise Program

12. Senior Capstone:
Business Development Experiences

13. Senior Capstone:
Business Development Experiences

14. Senior Capstone:
Business Development Experiences
“… require spending a full year with a Senior Design or
Enterprise team, acting as consultants and writing a business
plan. The experience mimics an industry situation: students are
required to seek out information, come up to speed on technical
specifications, communicate with the team, identify potential
markets, find funding sources, and make profitable business
recommendations to suit the current market needs. At the end
of the year, teams present their written plan in a format that is
similar to those used by start-up businesses to secure funding.”

15. Senior Capstone:
Business Development Experiences
“… require spending a full year with a Senior Design or
Enterprise team, acting as consultants and writing a business
plan. The experience mimics an industry situation: students are
required to seek out information, come up to speed on technical
specifications, communicate with the team, identify potential
markets, find funding sources, and make profitable business
recommendations to suit the current market needs. At the end
of the year, teams present their written plan in a format that is
similar to those used by start-up businesses to secure funding.”

16. Examples – Last Year

17. Examples – This year
• Electric Vehicle Support Equipment (EVSE), Transportation Enterprise
The challenge for the business school students is to propose and develop a
sustainable business model for an electric charging station in Houghton downtown
area.
• Accessible Light Fixture, Senior Design
The business school students aim to first locate a market for this, find channels of
distribution, business model to generate and subsequently sustain the revenue
stream.
• Economic Recovery of Alloying Elements from Grinding Swarf, Senior Design
(Recover usable and valuable Cobalt and Nickel metals from the wastes generated
from the "swarf,” wastes from metal grinding, drilling, drilling, etc). The business
school students aim to first locate potential sources that generate a lot of these
wastes, then locate a market that need and could benefit from the technology that
could recover cobalt and nickel and also a market for distributing this recovered
cobalt and nickel.

18. Next Year and Beyond
• Required for all Seniors
– Estimate: 20 teams

19. Challenges
• Students viewing this as an isolated class.
• Communication between the students and the
engineering students.
• Access to necessary information (market, technical,
financial)
– “We had to get up to speed on the technology, find the right
people to talk to, and figure out where to find the information we
needed. It really required initiative to get things done, which is
tough when you have a full load of classes.”

20. Challenges
• Developing a new set of intermediate
deliverables.
• Finding good/suitable projects.
• Industry sponsors.
– A positive and a negative