Graduates Face Increasing Career Challenges - Major Universities Respond with Entrepreneurship and Innovation Degree Programs

MINNEAPOLIS, Nov. 24, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- With continued job market stagnation, it is increasingly common for college students and entrepreneurs to pursue extended educational opportunities that focus their skills and knowledge on entrepreneurship and that prepare them to handle the challenges of innovating new products and markets.

Case Western Reserve University, in the award-winning Physics Entrepreneurship Program (PEP - http://step.case.edu/pep.shtml), is now using the book Innovate the Future as a key component of the PEP entrepreneurship and innovation curriculum. In Innovate the Future, globally recognized innovator David Croslin provides a structure and framework that can be used to analyze a company's innovation dilemma and then defines the methods needed to beat competitors in generating new ideas and delivering those ideas to market as new product innovations.

Students in Case Western's PEP program study state-of-the-art physics, practical business, and technology innovation while working on a real-world entrepreneurial project with an existing company or their own startup. "PEP is the perfect example of a university providing students with real-world knowledge and experience that will allow entrepreneurs to hit the ground running. It is no longer sufficient for our universities to just deliver technical details and knowledge through traditional degree plans. It is critical that students, regardless of age, understand the business aspects of applying that technical knowledge in a real-world, practical and competitive manner," says Croslin.

Croslin is scheduled to speak at Innovation seminars at multiple universities, including Case Western. These seminars, focused on both the business and technology schools through separate tracks, will emphasize how to create innovative new products and how to bring those products to market successfully. Croslin, the Chief Innovation Officer of InnoWisdom (http://www.innowisdom.com), a global innovation consultancy specializing in both corporate and university-based innovation training, will break down and differentiate between the innovation models of key technology companies including Apple, Google and the Chinese electric car company BYD.

Croslin feels that universities are increasingly recognizing the need for innovation education: "In addition to Case Western, we are working on seminars at the University of Minnesota, Cleveland State University and many other colleges and universities. The goal is to expand the skills of entrepreneurs, young and old, so that they can compete through aggressive innovation models. To create the jobs we need to fully employ within the U.S., we need to provide educational platforms like Case's PEP that foster a whole new breed of entrepreneurial student." In addition to seminars, InnoWisdom is driving innovation education through events like its Innovation Case Study Contest at the University of Minnesota.

The book Innovate the Future will be released soon in Mandarin Chinese. Croslin's InnoWisdom is focusing on driving innovation training into markets such as China, India, Brazil and the Middle East. "Growth markets, like China and India, are looking for a product innovation model that is not based on 'copy and sell.' InnoWisdom will open the door for educators, entrepreneurs and innovators to influence not only the innovative capabilities of U.S.-based businesses but also those in these growth markets."

In addition to colleges and universities, executive teams are praising Innovate the Future at leading global, multinational companies including ATT, Alcatel-Lucent and Rogers Communications. Across global markets, including the U.S., Europe, China and the Middle East, all reviews are overwhelmingly positive: ZDnet, TechForum, CIOInsight/Baseline, Dr. Dobb's Journal, TechTarget, I-CIO, British Computer Society, Amazon and many others.

David Croslin is Chief Innovation Officer of InnoWisdom, a consultancy specializing in pioneering innovation related consulting services, training programs, seminars, and workshops. He served as Chief Technologist at Hewlett-Packard and Chief Product Architect at Verizon Business. His LinkedIn group connects more than four-thousand leading innovators in eighty-five countries (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1831025).

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SOURCE David Croslin