Building an “i-Learning” Environment for Entrepreneurial Engineering Gianluca Elia, Alessandro Margherita, Giustina Secundo, Giuseppina Passiante Department of Innovation Engineering Euro-Mediterranean Incubator, University of Salento Lecce, Italy {gianluca.elia; alessandro.margherita; giusy.secundo; giuseppina.passiante}@unisalento.it Abstract— This paper presents an experimentation, realized within an International Master’s, aimed to develop in tomorrow’s engineers the entrepreneurial capabilities required to develop technology-intensive products and services in the domain of e-business. The new professional profile of the Entrepreneurial Engineer is introduced, along with the innovative features of an “i-learning” environment which supports the development of such profile. The interdisciplinarity, interactivity, immediacy, internetworking and individualization aspects of the environment are discussed with a particular focus on the curriculum design and the action learning strategy applied in the program. Keywords-Engineering Education, Entrepreneurial Capabilities, Action Learning, Southern-Mediterranean Cooperation. I. INTRODUCTION Engineering knowledge and professionals have always been at the core of economic progress and social welfare. Historically, engineering has applied technology to provide answers in societal problems, being in this sense a “science of solutions” and the discipline of “how to do” something. Engineering has today the opportunity to realize an important paradigm shift, moving from the search of solutions to a proactive identification of business opportunities in terms of new technology-intensive products and services required by the market, with a potential of large-scale exploitation. This capacity is typical of the entrepreneurship process, that can promote positive change and economic growth [1]. As the world’s dependence on technology increases, the demand for entrepreneurship focused on “technology-intensive opportunity” is intensifying. Technology entrepreneurship, whether in a start-up or established company, is a spirited approach to business leadership that involves identifying potential market and technology-intensive opportunities, gathering necessary resources, and managing rapid growth and risks using decision-making skills [2]. Other authors introduce the concept of “high-tech entrepreneurship” as the capacity, competence and attitude to transform new ideas, technologies and inventions in economic and social value through the development of innovative business models [3]. High skilled and qualified human capital can be the engine of socio-economic progress through the effective resolution of urgent challenges affecting societies (e.g. security, sustainable mobility, energy, health care, education, etc.) [4]. The proliferation of opportunities increases the centrality of those higher education systems which address the development of entrepreneurial competencies and skills and balance them with specialized competencies in different technology areas. This requires substantial changes in engineering education. Education in engineering domains has traditionally followed changes in technology and society with the purpose to build a workforce prepared to solve increasingly complex challenges. The intensity and speed of changes today makes this endeavor more difficult. Engineering education must take into account that future students will learn in a completely different way and they should be able to solve still unknown problems [5]. There is thus a need to design and build more active, innovative and engaging learning environments [6] which focus on systemic and interdisciplinary curricula, with strong emphasis on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. These aspects are influencing engineering educators to innovate key areas like curricula development, communication and the promotion of industry-university ties. In such scenario, the research motivation and focus of this article can be declined in two main questions. The first is related to which are the competencies and skills of the emerging professional profile of the entrepreneurial engineer, with the investigation of the merge of engineering and business creation issues. The second question relates to which are the building blocks and phases which characterize the acquisition of entrepreneurial capabilities in engineering contexts. The main assumption here is that the peculiarities of entrepreneurship education in engineering contexts, respect to other areas such as strategic management or innovation management, ask to identify innovative models to drive the development of practical competencies and market-oriented skills. This article presents a learning environment for entrepreneurial engineering education developed in the frame of an International Master’s in e-Business Management. The program has been realized by the Mediterranean School of e-Business Management (MED School), an initiative integrating research and education launched by the University of Salento (Italy) in cooperation with public and private southern Mediterranean stakeholders. This initiative aims at experimenting new approaches and strategies for developing 978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education" April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan Page 1201