Kettering University

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Sniffing out business opportunities

By Gary J. Erwin

 

 

 

 

 

Skunk Works. Sound familiar? Probably not. Most readers have no idea what this phrase means.

But in 1943 during the height of World War II, Skunk Works was an organization within Lockheed Aircraft Corp., a manufacturer of war aircraft. Skunk Works was formed 1943 following a meeting with company officials and representatives from the Air Tactical Service Command (ATSC) of the Army Air Force. Why? Because of the German fighter jet threat over war-torn Europe, Lockheed had a chance to develop an airframe around a powerful jet engine called the British Goblin. A month after this meeting, a young Lockheed engineer named Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson (who gave the moniker Skunk Works to his internal intrapreneurial organization) and other engineers submitted the initial XP-80 proposal to ATSC and two days later they received word to move on the project. Johnson’s team had funding from Lockheed, complete autonomy and a deadline of 150 days to develop a new jet engine fighter under extreme security. The result: delivery of a new, highly innovative jet fighter seven days earlier than expected and a chance for the allies to bring the war to a close.

Skunk Works is an example of intrapreneurship—the practice of applying entrepreneurial skills and approaches within an established organization by employees who basically operate within this framework like entrepreneurs.

So how does this concept apply to Kettering University?

Since 2006, Dr. Massoud Tavakoli, professor of Mechanical Engineering (ME), Dr. Andy Borchers, associate professor of Business and Information Systems and interim dept. head, and Dr. Bill Riffe, professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, have worked to develop entrepreneurship opportunities and academic programming at Kettering. In 2006 and again in 2007, the team of professors received a grant in each year for $50,000 from the Kern Family Foundation through the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN), which supported the development of an introductory class called BUSN—572 Innovation and New Ventures, and the Kettering Entrepreneur Society (www.kesociety.com). This student-lead organization sponsors business plan competitions, provides support services and other activities in an effort to promote an entrepreneurial culture at Kettering based on innovation. Additionally, KES helped spawn several new student-owned businesses based in Flint. For the State of Michigan and City of Flint, which currently has an unemployment rate of more than nine percent, new, innovative businesses are necessary to insure the economic potential and outlook of this part of the country.

Today, entrepreneurship studies at Kettering also focus on intrapreneurship, which helps provide students a comprehensive understanding of how innovative ideas are spurred and supported internally by parent companies.

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