They’ve founded startups and led companies.

Now Naeem Zafar and Aleks Gollu are bringing entrepreneurship into the classroom as the inaugural professors of innovation on Northeastern’s Oakland campus.

“We are going to expose students to what’s possible,” says Zafar, founding CEO of TeleSense, an IoT (Internet of Things) company in Silicon Valley.

“When they see other entrepreneurs, they’ll realize there’s more than one way to live and make money. They’ll realize, ‘I could be a job giver. I don’t have to be a job taker,’” Zafar says.

Today’s freshmen students “are most likely going to have multiple careers in their lifetime,” says Gollu, who has started three companies including 11Sight, a customer engagement platform.

“We are living at a time when the only constant is change. And it’s fair to say change is accelerating. So the key thing they need to learn is how to learn,” Gollu says.

An innovation hub

Both Gollu and Zafar, who hold positions with Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, have had experience teaching Northeastern students in the past.

They say what makes the Oakland campus unique is the combination of the university’s emphasis on experiential learning and entrepreneurship, and the opportunities provided in the Bay Area and nearby Silicon Valley.

Gollu and Zafar say the Oakland students in their innovation courses will hear guest speakers from high-tech and other companies and learn about opportunities for co-ops and internships at startups and established businesses.

“We’ll give them examples of real entrepreneurs who created a company with $100 in savings,” Zafar says. 

In case after case, students will study what other resources entrepreneurs used to get started so they gradually develop an entrepreneurial mindset, he says. 

The goal is to make the Oakland campus a destination for students interested in innovation and entrepreneurship, Zafar says.

“If you do a good job building a community connected to local businesses and entrepreneurs, then — and only then — we can transform (the campus) into an innovation hub,” he says.

Oakland as ‘the fourth startup’

Gollu says an Oakland colleague told him to consider his new role on campus “as your fourth startup. What you’re really excited about is growing this new campus.”

In his innovation course, students learn theory — such as the difference between disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation — but will also apply market research techniques by dividing up into teams to design fundable projects that ultimately will be reviewed by a panel of stakeholders and investors.

The projects are primarily focused on business ideas about improving student life on campus, such tracking lines and wait times, ways to barter goods such as books and clothing and an app to organize closets, Gollu says.

He says students will work with other departments on campus, including engineering, arts and design and even the Oakland campus farm to design a composting system and other sustainable environmental solutions.