Faculty Friday: Ian Mashiter

Faculty Friday is a series highlighting members of the Initiative on Cities’ (IOC) Faculty Advisory Board, by exploring their work on campus and in the city. This week, we are highlighting Ian Mashiter, Director of Curriculum, Innovate@BU and Senior Lecturer, Strategy and Innovation, Questrom School of Business.

By Claudia Chiappa

Before coming to Boston University, Ian Mashiter worked as a tech entrepreneur. “After doing that for several years it felt like a logical progression for me to go and help the next generation,” recounted Mashiter. “I thought teaching would be a great way of doing it.”

He now teaches entrepreneurship and is one of the founding members of Innovate@BU, a campus wide initiative that promotes entrepreneurship and innovation among students.

Students and innovation

Innovate@BU provides students with learning programs, competitions, and workshops to help them develop their ideas and turn them into something that could have an impact. Mashiter is the Director of Curriculum at Innovate@BU, and he overseas a newly introduced minor, Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

“My role in Innovate changed. For the first couple of years I was managing director of the BUild Lab, so I was busy recruiting the staff and building the programs,” noted Mashiter. “After my two years there … I moved into a position as curriculum director. My job was to make sure the newly launched minor was successful and to handle questions students and administration on campus had about [the] minor.”

The biggest challenge, he said, is convincing students that they have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. In particular, Mashiter explained how many students wrongly believe they have to be in a specific field, such as business or engineering, in order to be an entrepreneur. “They don’t think that they can do it,” noted Mashiter. “Part of our role is to talk about the fact that innovation can come from all disciplines and can come from anybody on campus. It’s about getting students to have an entrepreneurial mindset, a can-do attitude towards solving problems. It’s about getting students to start and then giving them the resources to help them along the way.”

Innovation and Cities

“The Initiative On Cities is a lot about innovation, how we do things better within our cities,” Mashiter said. He is working to help students see the link between innovation and cities.

“I’m hoping to be a bridge between the two and get more students interested in this area of innovation and get them working on some ideas,” noted Mashiter. “I don’t know what they’ll come up with, [because] that’s what innovation is about. But I think there’s a fertile ground.”

There are many areas in cities where students can come up with innovative ideas and make a difference. As examples, Mashiter suggested innovate approaches to effective transportation and ways to make urban living more sustainable and equitable.

Outside of BU, Mashiter is deeply involved in Boston’s “entrepreneurship ecosystem.” He is on the board of Capital Network, a nonprofit organization that provides financial education to young entrepreneurs, and he is a judge and mentor at Mass Challenge.