How the uOttawa Faculty of Engineering instills an entrepreneurial mindset in students

A decade ago, TerraFixing chief operating officer Vida Gabriel was a chemistry-loving student in high school with little-to-no interest in business or entrepreneurship.  

“I didn’t like the sales aspect of business and entrepreneurship,” explains the 28-year-old co-founder of the company, whose technology does direct air capture (DAC) for carbon removal and storage. “If you had told me back then that I’d be a founder of a company, I would have laughed.”

But that all changed after getting a taste of the uOttawa Faculty of Engineering’s curriculum. Fast forward a few years and Gabriel’s company— which says its technology is the only DAC solution that works in freezing or dry conditions—has already secured a $10 million contract with Quebec’s TUGLIQ Energy and $1.6 million in seed funding to capture carbon in Canada’s North.

Gabriel credits a great deal of her company’s success to the skills she learned at uOttawa through its entrepreneurial ecosystem, which provides students with resources and support, such as entrepreneurship-focused programs, courses, workshops, and competitions.

Professor Hanan Anis, director of the School of Engineering Design and Teaching Innovation, says entrepreneurship is baked into the Faculty’s activities as a funnel, with education and engagement top-of-funnel and startup incubation and acceleration near the bottom.

uOttawa Engineering’s entrepreneurship funnel includes:

• The Simon Nehme Summer Entrepreneurship School, which helps students develop an entrepreneurial mindset and learn about startup tools and strategies, such as design thinking, idea pitching, business model canvas creation, and customer discovery and validation.  
• The MakerLaunch Startup Accelerator for engineering and computer science students (and recent alumni), which aims to give startups the team, facilities and tools they need to launch and scale their business. Companies recently emerging from the MakerLaunch accelerator include Noibu (named a Globe and Mail Top Growing Company in 2023) and Advanced Environmental Molecular Analytics Ltd. (AEMA).  
• The recently expanded Engineering Pitch Competition, part of Design Day at the Faculty of Engineering, where aspiring founders pitch to a panel of judges and win prize money and support. Pitch competitions are held each spring and fall (with the next on November 28).

It’s all meant to spur an entrepreneurial way of thinking that encourages initiative, persistence and flexibility, enabling students to identify opportunities when others see obstacles.

“Developing an entrepreneurial mindset is about much more than starting a business—it’s a journey of growth,” explains Anis. “It means learning to spot opportunities where others see problems and finding creative solutions.”

Gabriel was also inspired by Faculty of Science members like Professor Vincent Tabard-Cossa, who is vice-dean of Innovation and Strategic Partnership and who spun out a company from a lab and had a successful exit. He and Alexandre Poulain, vice-dean, Research and Infrastructure, were two key players in TerraFixing’s ability to stay within Ottawa and continue bring a part of uOttawa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Anis says embedding the entrepreneurial spirit into the curriculum helps equip students with crucial skills that are highly valued in the job market and life in general, including critical thinking and problem-solving, communication and teamwork, along with risk-taking and resilience.

She adds that an entrepreneurship-themed education helps reveal new pathways for students, such as founding a business, self-employment or freelancing, and even “intrapreneurship” by driving innovation within existing organizations.

“The entrepreneurial mindset gives students the tools they need to create value in any situation and make a real difference in the world,” she says. “In today’s fast-changing environment, having an entrepreneurial mindset is one of the most valuable skills students can develop.”

Gabriel agrees, adding that of all the important lessons learned during her time at uOttawa, the resourcefulness and openness to new opportunities that come with an entrepreneurial mindset were likely the most valuable.  

“The most important thing it taught me was that you don’t know everything, but you can find the information. And whatever needs to be done, you can find a way to do it,” she says, adding that learning how to empathize with and speak to prospective investors or clients was a close second.

“We were so in love with our technology that every time we pitched during the early stages, it was about finding an enticing way to show people how awesome our tech is,” explains Gabriel. “But one of the first things we learned is: Who are you pitching to? What do they want to hear? What do they care about?  

“We were really woken up by the fact that early investors we were talking to didn’t actually care about our tech. They were more interested in hearing about the business plan. They wanted to know how they were going to make money and get a high rate of return on their investment.”

This article was first published in the Ottawa Business Journal.