Entrepreneur In Residence

Bringing Global Entrepreneurial Leaders to SDSU

The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center invited Dr. Alex Bruton for a week in San Diego as our Entrepreneur-in-Residence to explore the entrepreneurial ecosystem at San Diego State University. Alex Bruton is the founder of an open education company called the Straight Up Business Institute and a Professor at the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary where he teaches Engineering Entrepreneurship and a graduate Innovation in Entrepreneurship course.

During this stay, Bruton visited various entrepreneurship classes and held workshops with the students around ideation and design. He shared the tools necessary to build bigger and better versions of their own ideas. He also did a workshop in the ZIP Launchpad where he shared his tool called the “Value Proposition Wheel” and discussed design testing and innovation around prototyping.

One of the many things that impressed Bruton during his visit at SDSU was the welcoming culture on the campus and the space in the Entrepreneurship Center, which he describes as “genuinely transdisciplinary”. From the seating area to the incubator labs, Bruton was fascinated by its intelligent design, especially having the three centers in the same co-working space: The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center, the ZIP Launchpad, and the ZIP Idea Lab.

Bruton spoke very highly of his experience at SDSU. Some major takeaways from his visit at SDSU are ideas he can implement at Calgary into his classes and workshops. By sharing his experience at SDSU to his colleagues, Bruton hopes others can see how SDSU and its initiatives are “a leading-edge” in the entrepreneurship field further advancing its success. We are thankful Bruton shared his insights and ideas with our students and faculty, and are looking forward to his next visit at SDSU.