By Olivia Miller
In 2018, Marshall University opened the Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation, or iCenter, dedicated to inspiring an entrepreneurial spirit among students and empowering them with the necessary education to reframe the economic future of West Virginia and Appalachia.
The iCenter conducts hands-on design thinking workshops, hosts speaking engagements and provides one-on-one coaching to more than 45 businesses and entrepreneurs. By using Design for Delight Education (D4D), the iCenter encourages students to lean into entrepreneurship and overcome the barriers associated with it.
“D4D helps students form an emotional connection to a problem and the people who are experiencing it through gaining deep customer empathy,” says Associate Director Tricia Ball. “Another big barrier for people is they think they don’t have enough money to start a business. D4D is great because you use quick, low-fidelity prototypes that cost little to no money to test your idea.”
The iCenter also boasts an Entrepreneur in Residence Program that builds the center’s capacity to support the development of high-tech and high-impact businesses in the area, while also working with The EdVenture Group, West Virginia Department of Education, West Virginia University and Intuit to infuse innovation and entrepreneurship into career and technical education programs in high schools in the state through an experiential entrepreneurship curriculum.
Ben Eng, associate professor of marketing and entrepreneurship and executive director of the iCenter, views the combination of entrepreneurship and education as a sustainable and positive loop that can simultaneously power and grow West Virginia.
“If Marshall can teach its students to innovate business ideas that solve Huntington and West Virginia’s big challenges, then the city and state will grow and tax revenues will increase, which means more funding for higher education and Marshall. We can then teach more students how to innovate more business solutions to even bigger city and state challenges,” Eng says. “And that flywheel can keep spinning forward. If done correctly, the combination of entrepreneurship and education is a sustainable and positive loop.”
Eng grew up in Huntington in a small business family. His parents owned and operated a Chinese restaurant in downtown for more than 30 years thanks to support from the local community. He says that entrepreneurship gave his family a second chance, and he hopes it can do the same for the people of West Virginia.
“Entrepreneurship can play a key role in reversing the brain drain and outmigration from West Virginia,” says Ball. “Right now, our best and brightest students feel like they have to leave the state when they graduate high school or college so they can get jobs in their fields, but they don’t have to leave—they can create those jobs for themselves right here.”
