BIIP: a mix of engineering design and technological entrepreneurship

This article presents a pedagogical experiment based on an integrated approach to simultaneously develop design and technological entrepreneurship skills in fourth-year computer engineering students at the Universite de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. The article describes the experiment which was carried out four times and involved, in the last three instances, a group of three 3-credit courses spread over a period of two 4-month study terms separated by a 4-month placement in industry. It shows how project ideas were generated and screened, how projects were managed, what the interaction was between the market study and the product specifications, the supervision that students received from participating faculty. It ends with a critical analysis of the results obtained from both the students' and the faculty's points of view and with a few tips on how to improve BIIP activities.