Catalyzing entrepreneurship from the ground up : an experiment in small-town India
Name
891096854-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
15.94 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0e21ac0aae453ceab186fd5477a638ac
Author(s)
Nair, Rajesh Muraleedharan
Advisor(s)
Charles Fine.
Date Issued
2014
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Entrepreneurs are essential for creating companies, jobs and growing wealth in communities. Currently, existing entrepreneurial programs start with self-identified entrepreneurs and provide facilities for their growth. However, these programs fail to tap into a whole community of latent youth entrepreneurs. Can more of such youth, with no prior exposure to entrepreneurship, be catalyzed into starting new ventures? If so, how? These questions are addressed in this study with a particular focus on engineering student communities in small town India. By conducting experiments we test the hypothesis that the entrepreneurial attitude of students can be changed through a specially designed learning workshop on innovation, fabrication and entrepreneurship. The subject of this research is the design of the curriculum for this workshop, and the analysis of the effects of the workshop on two experimental student communities. The students were selected without any requirements on academic performance or entrepreneurial experience and aptitude. The results of the experiments show, overwhelmingly, that a significant change in entrepreneurial thinking can be achieved and indicate clearly that innovators and entrepreneurs can be created from ordinary student populations with the right kind of teaching. This can have huge implications for building entrepreneurship ecosystems in different parts of the world, giving average individuals the opportunity to be entrepreneurs.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-104).
Subjects
Engineering Systems Division.
System Design and Management Program.
MIT Department
System Design and Management Program.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
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