The Entrepreneurship of Innovation

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

So often people ask me, “How does research get out in the world?” When that question comes around, to me it means that someone is not asking how best to write her next academic paper. Rather, generally someone seems to be interested in how innovations can see the light of day in industry. On campus, we have a number of resources that students and faculty can take advantage of: the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship which bridges the academic and business world at the Robert H. Smith School of Business; the Maryland Industrial Partnership which funds partnerships with industry; the Technology Advancement Program which offers resources for developing companies.

Here in the iSchool, Dr. Ping Wang leads research in understanding the spread of IT innovation. His work ranges from analyzing the diffusion of Information Technology Concepts in the PopIT project to providing the much needed data and tools for analyzing innovations of all possible outcomes, included failed innovations in the STICK project. Ping works with teams of very talented faculty and students so I would encourage you to look at his research websites.

Ping also created and teaches a course on Managing IT Innovations in Organizations. Recently, he had a company CEO come to visit to talk to students and faculty about the entrepreneurship of innovation. What follows is a summary of this exciting class!

Ping Wang:

On March 10, 2011, Mr. Tien Wong, the CEO of Lore Systems, visited iSchool and gave a guest lecture on "Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation." He spoke to the iSchool students in "Managing IT Innovations in Organizations," a course created and taught by me with the support by the National Science Foundation (grant SBE-0915645).

In 1992, Mr. Wong founded Unitel (CyberRep) with his three friends, in recognition of quality gaps in the call center industry. Unitel grew exponentially and became a leading company in the industry. In early 2003, Wong sold Unitel to Affiliated Computer Services, a global leader in business process outsourcing. Then he bought Lore Systems, a company providing cloud computing services.

Relevant to IT innovation, the theme of the course, Mr. Wong shared with the students his insights on two specific innovations: digital recording technology and remote predictive dialing. As a career entrepreneur, Wong described entrepreneurship as more of art than science, and more of feeling than thinking. He suggested having “4Cs” as a basis for being an entrepreneur, namely confidence, cash, customer, and executive capability. Mr. Wong continued to talk about the best time to start a business, the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur, problems in expanding the business, and ways to attract investors and raise money. Finally, Mr. Wong offered some advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

The video of this talk is available in two parts: Part A and Part B. This event was made possible by the iSchool's collaboration with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business.