The Malaysian Insider

SINGAPORE, Nov 4 — To describe the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as one of the world’s most powerful engines of the entrepreneurial spirit would be a massive understatement.

As one of its famously fastidious professors might put it, just check the numbers. If the revenues of all the companies formed by MIT graduates were added up, that would be more than US$2 trillion (RM6.86 trillion) a year — more than the gross domestic product of all but the 10 largest nations in the world.

There are about 6,900 companies in the state of Massachusetts alone founded by MIT alumni. They employ just under a million Americans. A further 18,900 such companies are scattered around the world employing hundreds of thousands.

MIT professor Thomas Magnanti brings up these figures not to boast but to inspire those who join the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SU).

As its newly appointed president, he wants the country’s fourth university to perform the same kind of MIT magic in unleashing business potential.

“My hope is that SU will do for Singapore what MIT did for Massachusetts and the US economy: be an engine of growth for the Singapore economy,” he says.

The 64-year-old headed MIT’s School of Engineering, often referred to as the world’s best engineering department, so he knows as well as anyone how to build something from the ground up.

SU opens its doors in August 2011, and its course structure — engineering and its myriad design elements - is already clear. But Magnanti knows that turning it into an academic high achiever will prove a far harder task to nail down.

SU’s blueprint is being drawn up in part by looking at how the world’s great entrepreneurial universities — Stanford, which gave birth to Silicon Valley, and MIT do it.

Magnanti says he spent ‘a lifetime’ in these two institutions, including four years at Stanford studying for his two master’s degrees and his PhD.

He joined MIT as an assistant professor in 1971 and spent the next 37 years there.

Still, he admits that it is difficult to pinpoint what goes into creating the “magic at MIT — the special environment at MIT that tends to bring out the entrepreneurial spirit in young people”.

If one thing is certain, it is about bringing together the best and brightest students and faculty.

“And by best and brightest I don’t mean the best academically. I mean young people who are bright and who have that special something and want to make a difference,” he says.

“In short, they have passion. They tend to be people who want to be leaders, who want to change the world.”

Even more difficult to define is what MIT does to keep the fire burning. But it helps that faculty members are as passionate as students.

“That passion and zeal can be powerful. It can be downright infectious,” he says, adding that MIT faculty constantly have students coming to them with ambitious ideas for the Next Big Thing.

“We never say no. We may team them with faculty members as advisers and even give them a space to work in. If it is a really good idea, we will even look at seed money.”

The institution also has a “vigorous entrepreneurial ecosystem” to nurture and support students and faculty who want to launch new businesses.

This network includes organisations and initiatives like the Deshpande Centre, the MIT Enterprise Forum, the MIT Entrepreneurship Centre and the MIT Technology Licensing Office.

Or take the MIT $100K Business Plan Competition — winners have gone on to form at least 120 companies — and the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, which has helped give birth to 88 companies since 2000.

So can the MIT magic rub off on SU?

“I don’t see why not,” Magnanti declares without hesitation.

He is equally certain about what is driving SU’s approach.

It is offering degrees in architecture and sustainable design, engineering product design, engineering systems and system design and information engineering and design.

The word “design” keeps appearing for a reason.

Design as an academic discipline will be infused and stressed in all the courses, Magnanti says.

Students will be part of a multi-disciplinary team given projects to design a product or a system. They will use design processes such as identifying the end users and profiling them, understanding their needs for a product or service, building a prototype and then testing it with the end users for feedback, and then going back to enhance it further.

“With training in design thinking, an engineer or architect will be able to bring together his creativity, imagination and technical knowledge to create products or systems that satisfy human needs,” he says.

In the new economy, he adds, design thinking is hugely important.

“Let me use an obvious example. Why is everyone crazy about Apple products? Because they look good, they work well, they have enabled people to discover new uses for their phone or portable music player such as the iPod.

“In a knowledge economy it is these kinds of products that will sell — ones that satisfy customers’ needs and enhance their experience of using it.”

The SU mission statement hints at what he sees as the wider roles universities play.

There is the obvious one of driving growth in the new economic global order taking shape, and nurturing talents to generate winning new ideas.

“Singapore, like many nations around the world, is transiting into a knowledge economy and in such an economy, it is ideas and innovations that will drive the economy and create wealth,” he says.

“A knowledge economy is all about creative enterprises and for that you need highly educated, talented people. The places with the highest concentration of talent on the planet will win.

“So the first important role of a university should be to nurture these highly educated, skilled and innovative workers.”

He also thinks it is equally vital for universities to be powerhouses of knowledge creation.

“The new knowledge they produce through research must be translated into cutting edge products and services in the marketplace.”

Magnanti believes that SU is being launched at an opportune time because Singapore is pulling out the stops as it transforms itself into a knowledge economy.

“It is putting in place various measures to encourage a research and innovation culture. It will be a crucible for innovation,” he says.

“And it comes at a time when the other Asian economies are rising and emerging. There will be a myriad of opportunities for young people to seize.”

He also believes strongly that SU can go on to become a major player, and that in 10 or 20 years it will be seen as one of the world’s foremost universities, providing a first-rate technology and design education.

Producing ‘technologically grounded leaders’ is also a fundamental aim.

“Our hope is that some will become the next generation of leading entrepreneurs creating companies,” says Magnanti.

“They will have an impact on society in different ways. Some will be leaders of industry, some in government. We’ll have some academics sitting at Stanford, MIT, Harvard and the local universities.”

And he has an idea of how SU graduates will stand out from the rest.

“What will be special about them is what’s special about MIT graduates: They will understand technology and design in ways that few others do,” he says.

“It will be part of their soul, it would have been imbued in them the way that there’s a passion. They will also have in them this sense of obligation to contribute, to give back to society. They will be leaders with social conscience.” — The Straits Times