Eco-Entrepreneurship Focus: Stimulating Environmental Innovation and Technology Transfer

Students may add a focus on Eco-Entrepreneuship (EE) to any of the Bren MESM specializations. EE is a partnership between two highly regarded academic centers at UCSB--the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and the nationally recognized Technology Management Program (TMP) in the College of Engineering.

Addressing serious environmental and natural resource problems requires ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Through their EE collaboration, the Bren School and TMP are expanding and promoting environmental entrepreneurship and technology transfer in an altogether new way. EE links innovation with the environment by providing entrepreneurial training and support for the launch of socially valuable new ventures.

Students who select this option take courses at the Bren School and in TMP in a curriculum that leads to the development of a business plan to launch innovative technologies, products, or practices that address important environmental or natural resource problems and enhance the value of the organization or other business entity, or may lead to the creation of new entities. The business plan includes a mission statement, value proposition (the opportunity), a target market, an industry study, competitive analysis, financials, and an exit strategy. The business plan provides tangible evidence of students' skills that are useful for companies, government agencies, and NGOs at a time when organizations across the country are looking to develop technologies and products that promote sustainability, address climate change, and improve overall environmental quality and natural resource allocation and conservation.

Students pursuing the Eco-Entrepreneurship focus can earn a UC-recognized certificate in Graduate Program in Management Practice (GPMP) because much of the EE coursework overlaps with GPMP program. TMP courses include technology feasibility, new venture marketing, new venture finance, and business plan development. They are augmented by Bren courses in competitive strategy, corporate environmental management, and industrial ecology. Students develop the business plan as part of their Group Projects and culminate their study by participating in the Business Plans Competition at UCSB and similar competitions at other institutions.

Through the EE collaboration, the Bren School and TMP are expanding and promoting environmental entrepreneurship and technology transfer as a valuable and effective way of addressing critical environmental and resource problems.

Bren students pursuing the Eco-Entrepreneurship track take the following courses:

ENGR 285B: New Venture Creation is about the process of creating a viable new business -- the principles may be mostly applicable to a business person thinking of adding a new product or new product line within an existing company, but the focus is on doing it as an independent entrepreneur.

285D: New Product Development is about the process of creating a new product within an existing company. This class stresses project management, and building management systems and processes that are replicable not just a one shot, start-up.  Within an ongoing organization one has to work with the corporations’ values, processes and strategies while the entrepreneur is trying to create for the first time a set of values, processes and strategies.  For most students “B” is probably most appropriate, but they may want to consider taking both if their schedules permit.

Students that want to pursue EE or students that are considering EE as a possibility must take ENGR 285B or ENGR 285D during fall quarter of their first year in the program. These classes help students develop the capacity to generate and flesh out ideas for eco-ent projects that might be appropriate for their group project/business plan. Taking one of these classes in the first quarter does not commit students to pursing EE. Rather, it keeps open for them the possibility of pursuing EE. Whether or not they decide to pursue EE the knowledge and skills gained in the course should still be of value.

A recommended schedule for EE students can be found here.

Much of the curriculum for Eco-Entrepreneurship parallels the requirements for the Graduate Program in Management Practice (GPMP) certificate offered by the Technology Management Program, and EE students who take the following two additional classes can earn this certificate as well.

Eco-Entrepreneurship students who want to earn a GPMP certificate must also complete: