By Engr. Dr. Nawaz Iqbal
With the implementation of a new vision of engineering education, enhanced by ideas of sustainable entrepreneurship, not only can engineering solve some of the biggest challenges in the world, but it can also do so in a scalable and ethical (regenerative) fashion.
The traditional pedagogy leading to the development of only practical skills should change to incorporate interdisciplinary thinking that instills sustainability into the genetic structure of every future engineer. Such transition demands scholarly models that combine environmental responsibility, societal change, and financial sustainability during the conceptualization, planning, and application of technical solutions.
In order to instill the mindset of sustainable entrepreneurship, engineering education cannot go on with older forms of teaching and learning (lecture-based delivery) and needs to promote learning ecosystems based on experience. This also involves an incubation hub of startups by the engineering colleges, where students come up with low-carbon technologies and circular economy practices. The value of projects should not always be ranked on the basis of functionality and efficiency alone, but also on how the projects are sustainable and have the longevity to generate value within the communities. This solution is much more than solving the problem; it develops active designers of systems.
Current curricula need to incorporate biomimicry and regenerative design thinking into biomimicry applied curriculum so that students can learn the engineering wonders of nature. An example would include water-capturing applications of beetles living in the desert or framework design influenced by the structure of leaves, resulting in the creation of start-ups that resemble balances of nature. Such bio-inspired models not only solve problems, but they also place human-made systems within planetary boundaries, and eventually form the foundation of startups that are defined as truly sustainable in nature.
The incorporation of sustainability indicators in the study of engineering alters the nature of measuring success. No premises here that students will be trained to judge their ventures on the results of the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. In real-life simulations, students have an opportunity to play with choices that reduce environmental degradation, maximize the usage of resources, and, at the same time, maximize inclusive positive effects on social phenomena. This kind of metrics brings about a sense of accountability and vision for future entrepreneurs.
Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural sensitivity should also be put in place as an essential component of engineering education. It is expected of the engineering students to learn the sustainable ways that are included in the local customs and how they can be scaled using technology. As an example, smart monitoring can use traditional methods of water conservation and have a high-impact business that builds on the cultural intelligence and balance with nature.
The ability to identify sustainably based startups can be fostered in transdisciplinary studios that embrace the engineering and business disciplines, sociology, and environmental science in a proactive fashion. These cross-functional groups promote a comprehensive design thinking model where the technological viability and the emotional connection with the users are merged with the eco-friendliness. These co-creation spaces reflect the complexity of the real world, and students are then ready to start businesses that perform well in the market, which is dynamic and ethically challenged.
One new instructional tool is to teach storytelling and systems thinking in the fundamental engineering classes. One can ask students to work out the journey of a product, in terms of its socio-environmental impact through its life cycle, i.e., extraction, and final life. This form of narration intensifies ethical interaction with this story and what future engineers can predict business models can look like that become less damaging and more restorative.
Blockchain and AI technologies should be instructed not only because of their technical advantages but also because they can allow the establishment of transparent and decentralized sustainable businesses. As an example, engineering students can create a blockchain-enabled supply chain system that conforms with ethical sources or even create AI models that maximize energy usage in smart cities. These new tools can power a new generation of green startups of conscience-minded tech-savvy engineers.
The entrepreneurial aspirations of the engineering students can be re-interpreted in a context of community immersion programs, where the students will be working and residing alongside the underprivileged or climate-vulnerable communities. Students get invested in solving the problem with all their focus as they observe the way the lack of concern about the environment and differences in infrastructure affect the current state of affairs. Such lived experience turns into the engine of the process that empowers and not exploit the marginalized population.
The adventures of circular design Circular design challenges, in which students are asked to make products out of recycled materials or design to disassemble, can light a flame in a new generation of engineers who think in circles instead of straight lines. Such problems lead to creative constraint and they compel the students to think of businesses that will perform optimally within the ecological boundaries. They also pave the way towards material innovation start-ups that cut to the middle between reneging and prosperity. Sustainability hackathons in which students are matched with industry mentors to address an immediate challenge affecting the planet should be made mandatory in the engineering curriculum.
Such intensive short durations not only speed up the ideation process, but also prove the solutions on the fly. The best ideas may receive robust advice and investment in the form of seed capital to help them bridge the gap between being a classroom idea to an actual product. The norm of mission-oriented and fast entrepreneurship can redefine the norms of innovation in engineering faculties. One of the basic novelties is the redefinition of internships: the students will not be able to intern in large corporations, but rather be embedded in eco-social startups or NGOs.
This experience of the grasshopper business adds objective innovation to their engineering way of thinking. These forms of internships have the potential to be pre-incubators, so students are able to conduct business experiments and investigate entrepreneurial resilience further. Technical subjects should include ethical entrepreneurship modules, which are developed on the basis of the actual dilemmas that green startups may face. Trade-off case-based discussion on the consequences of growth and hits on the environment, or stakeholder alignment dilemmas, presents practical knowledge to students.
The modules base entrepreneurship on a moral plane so that the development of businesses does not have to be at the expense of society or ecological livelihood. They can train students in game-based simulators to run AI and VR-powered real-time entrepreneurial ecosystems in which students can make choices that both impact climate metrics, biodiversity, and community health. These tools develop an intuitive sense of the complexity of problems and responsibility of decisions by actively simulating the effects of engineering decisions in real-time. Such simulations startups are more prone to becoming systemically viable and morally upright.
