What is the mission/objective of the Baker Institute?
Mission:The Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation aims to foster the entrepreneurial mindset that leads to creating value in the world. We provide the Lehigh community with access to the skills, resources, and connections needed to enable both for- and nonprofit entrepreneurial ventures to launch and prosper.
Description:The Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation is Lehigh University’s platform for building new enterprises. Entrepreneurship at Lehigh is seen as both a way of thinking and a discipline with specific tenets and skill sets. To that end students, faculty, and alumni are provided with the help they need to move from vision to reality. The faculty and staff of the Baker Institute believe that an idea — when properly nurtured and developed — can lead to discovery, value creation, and a better tomorrow for all.
What is the Baker Institute’s role both on and off campus?
The Baker Institute is the place at Lehigh University where students can bring their ideas or learn how to generate new ideas and take them to an entrepreneurial level, whether it is a product, a service, a company, or a nonprofit. It is a resource for students to expand their entrepreneurial education and experience through courses, degree programs, non-degree programs, extracurricular events, prototyping labs and incubation spaces, funding, internships, and entrepreneurship immersion programs. Off campus, the institute works with economic development organizations; “maker,” tech, and entrepreneurship groups; companies; and other entities to expand students’ opportunities and provide resources to the companies and groups.How do students get involved with the Baker Institute?
Students can contact us at inentin@lehigh.edu; stop by our office in Wilbur Annex, 11 E. Packer Ave. to meet our staff and learn about our programs; attend one of our extracurricular events – called “iDeXes;” take an entrepreneurship (ENTP) course; enter the EUREKA! Ventures Competition Series for student entrepreneurs; apply for an internship with one of our partner companies; be employed as a work study student in our office; seek an entrepreneurship minor; enter one of our graduate options, which include an MBA with a corporate entrepreneurship emphasis and one-year master’s degree in Technical Entrepreneurship; join the campus CREATE club; enter Lehigh’s Integrated Product Development program; participate in immersion programs such as LehighSiliconValley, and more.
Where can students find out more about the Baker Institute?
– Baker Institute website: http://www.lehigh.edu/entrepreneurship– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BakerLehigh– Twitter: https://twitter.com/bakerlehigh– YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BakerLehigh/videos– Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lehighbakerinstitute/sets/– LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Lehigh-University-Entrepreneurs-Network-64423/about
How was the Baker Institute started?
The Baker Institute was founded in 2010 with a generous donation from Lehigh alumnus Dexter F. Baker ’50’ ’57G, whose dream was to “inoculate” Lehigh students and the Lehigh campus with the belief that all people can be creative – and that it is through creativity, leading to innovation, fueling entrepreneurship that lives are changed and the world is made better.
Are there any events that the Baker Institute will be hosting this semester?
– iDeX: Women’s Empowerment: Creative Keys to Success (March 18, 2014), an interactive panel and skill-building session that is part of Lehigh’s Women’s Empowerment Week
– iDeX: Sales 101 (March 25, 2014), featuring successful Lehigh student entrepreneur Pierson Krass, founder of Krass & Co.
– Technical Entrepreneurship Open House (March 26, 2014), an introduction to the Technical Entrepreneurship master’s degree program with Q&A
– INNOVATE! CELEBRATE! Awards Dinner (April 7, 2014), celebration of EUREKA! Ventures Competition Series winners and outstanding student entrepreneurs
– Mini Maker Fair Lehigh Valley (April 26, 2014), a gathering of makers, techies, inventors, hobbyists, crafters, and enthusiasts at ArtsQuest’s SteelStacks
You can learn more about our events at: http://baker.sites.lehigh.edu/category/events
How can students get involved in the EUREKA! competition?
The annual EUREKA! Ventures Series Competition is open to Lehigh students and teams that have an idea, product, or company. Teams must include at least one team member who is an undergraduate or graduate student enrolled in a degree-seeking program at Lehigh. That student must both originate and lead the startup/project team.
We start accepting applications for the annual EUREKA! Ventures Competition Series in October. Winners are usually notified by the end of November and are honored in April at the annual Innovate! Celebrate! awards dinner. This year, the Baker Institute awarded more than $75,000 in prizes through the competition. Students can contact the Baker Institute office at inentin@lehigh.edu or (610) 758-5626 to get information about applying for the awards. Deadlines and guidelines are also posted on the website at www.lehigh.edu/entrepreneurship.
What are the goals for the future of the Baker institute?
We continue to expand, broaden, and deepen the resources that we offer to students and to strengthen and enhance Lehigh’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
One of our current Baker Institute-affiliated student entrepreneurs, Chris Hall ’13 ’14G, who founded an app development company, recently shared this:
“Without the IPD Program, LehighSiliconValley, LehighBostonStartup weekend, and the continuing support of the Baker Institute during my undergraduate time at Lehigh majoring in Bioengineering, I would not have been able to pursue and launch my startup with the success I have had so far and continue to do. Now that I am enrolled in the Technical Entrepreneurship master’s program, I’m able to fill in the gaps in my business knowledge and really learn how to run and launch a business.
“I also firmly believe that coming in first place in the Baker Institute’s EUREKA! Michael W. Levin ’87 Advanced Technology Competition in Fall 2011 was the catalyst to receiving further awards. The competition’s award, which included office space in the Ben Franklin TechVentures business incubator on Lehigh’s Mountaintop Campus, seed capital, and two student IPD teams, allowed me to move my business out of the dorm room. The award validated the potential of my company, ChallTech, and caused a “snowball effect” with other awards and grants from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), Pennsylvania Technology Collaborative (PaTCI), and the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC).
The Baker Institute is truly interdisciplinary, with affiliated faculty and students across Lehigh’s colleges. We offer a minor in Entrepreneurship (but not a major) because this provides students from all disciplines the opportunity to combine their majors with entrepreneurial education and experience. Whether you aim to be an entrepreneur or start a nonprofit yourself or simply to become more innovative within existing emerging or established companies or nonprofit enterprises, students in any major can supplement that discipline with a creative entrepreneurial mindset and skills that increase their ability to identify opportunities for innovation, to challenge the status quo in any field, and to implement sustainable change. Reflecting this, the Baker Institute operates under the axiom of Professor John Ochs, director of its Technical Entrepreneurship and IPD programs: “The greatest opportunities for innovation occur at the intersection of disciplines.”