Since 1995, the Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (TEC) program has positioned NC State as a leader in entrepreneurship education that takes advantage of our university’s strengths in science and engineering. As an innovative organization, TEC regularly makes changes aimed at pursuing new opportunities.
In 1994, the TEC founders, Professors Kingon and Markham, received grants totaling almost $1 million from the National Science Foundation and the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science to fund their study of technology commercialization processes. The goal of their research was to discover deficiencies in current technology transfer practices, then develop a tool to bring better structure to the commercialization process and as the foundation for a supporting curriculum. The results of this comprehensive study helped form a "roadmap" of the technology commercialization process. This roadmap, commonly referred to as the ‘TEC Algorithm’, turned out to be a useful foundation for a broad array of entrepreneurial activities, and we use it as a multi-semester teaching framework for the entrepreneurship concentration in the MBA program and for graduate students earning minors in a variety of other programs.
From 1995 to 2002, the TEC Program’s operations focused on educating business and technical graduate students in technology entrepreneurship and commercialization. In 2002, the TEC Program created the High Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (HiTEC) center in the College of Management and officially hired Angus Kingon as Executive Director of Technology Commercialization Programs. TEC’s expanded activities include extension and engagement for the College of Management.
In 2006, the College of Management reorganized, forming the new Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MIE) Department. With this change, and with the hiring of new faculty, course offerings were expanded to create the new Entrepreneurship Concentration. This latest innovation enriches the MBA experience and keeps TEC on the cutting edge of entrepreneurship education.
