NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IE) is excited to welcome Tom Miller back as the unit’s interim executive director. A widely recognized leader in the Research Triangle’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, Miller has influenced many students, founders and local leaders for more than forty years. His work not only shaped campus culture but also catalyzed the region’s evolution into a nationally recognized startup hub, with structures that kept top talent local, built multimillion-dollar businesses and bridged the gap from student to founder.

He formerly served as senior vice provost and is a McPherson Family Distinguished Professor Emeritus at NC State University. Miller will play a vital role in preparing the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program for new leadership and setting the course for many more decades of success.

From the start

In 1982, Miller joined the faculty in NC State’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering after earning his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and Mathematics from UNC Chapel Hill (now the joint NC State/UNC Biomedical Engineering program), where he learned the power of innovation, designing microchips to solve real-world biomedical problems.

The early ‘80s was an era of massive change driven by innovations that brought computing out from behind the glass walls of computing centers and into the hands of ordinary people, driven by entrepreneurial startups like Intel, Microsoft and Apple Computer. Miller felt the need to cultivate and nurture that entrepreneurial mindset in the young computer engineering students he was teaching at NC State and began informally mentoring a number of them who went on to found and lead successful technology startups.

In 1993, Miller had an opportunity to incorporate his ideas for supporting entrepreneurially minded engineering students into the curriculum. Together with a couple of other faculty colleagues, he was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to create the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP), an experiential learning approach in which students go through the motions of creating a technology startup, complete with ideation, customer discovery, product prototyping, investor pitches, and frequent talks with local tech entrepreneurs. Thirty-three years later, the EEP remains a vibrant and popular curriculum option in the College of Engineering, with numerous team projects launching as real companies after graduation.

Founding entrepreneurship at NC State

With proven success from the EEP, Miller was appointed to lead the campus-wide NC State Entrepreneurship Initiative (now Innovation and Entrepreneurship) in 2008. He recognized that the best innovation happens when students with different perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds and skills get together and ideate. 

In 2010, Miller spearheaded the creation of The Garage — a 24/7 space with meeting rooms and a prototyping lab with 3D printers, laser cutters, electronic benches and more.  Making the space available to all NC State students created an environment that facilitated “beneficial collision” – random meetings between innovative, entrepreneurially minded students that might have never happened otherwise  – leading to new ideas and collaborative efforts to create new products and services.

Through a donation from NC State alumnus Andy Albright, the Albright Entrepreneurs Village (AEV) was established in 2013. This living-learning village offers students from any major interested in entrepreneurship the opportunity to live and ideate together, fostering a culture of collaboration. 

He began to notice that promising startups were dying upon graduation as students faced a fork in the road: take the traditional path of a higher-paying corporate job or work in uncertainty on a startup. In 2014, he launched the Entrepreneurship Initiative Fellows program (later endowed and renamed the Dr. Thomas Kenan Miller III Fellowship), where founders would receive a monthly stipend, mentorship, resources and continued access to the Albright Entrepreneurship Garage and other university resources for six months to explore and develop their entrepreneurial skills and aspirations.

Beyond these key programs, Miller started other initiatives that still offer life-changing experiences for students. For 22 years, students have traveled with the entrepreneurship program to Silicon Valley, where they meet with alumni founders and innovators who have built successful companies. In 2009, a push for campus-wide pitch competitions brought eGames (now VenturePack Challenge), where students win equity-free cash prizes and mentorship to develop their businesses. 

A vision for innovation and entrepreneurship

When asked what the word entrepreneurship means, Miller often references Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson: “Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” He also likes NC State emeritus professor Paul Mugge’s definition of innovation as “value creation”, and sees entrepreneurship as an important pathway to bringing innovation to fruition where it can benefit society.

Miller sees that the university setting offers an unparalleled opportunity for students to take risks with a safety net around them. He stresses the importance of teaching an entrepreneurial mindset that allows students to work through failures and see them as learning opportunities. 

His belief that entrepreneurship cannot solely be taught through lectures is reflected in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship unit, which offers opportunities for experiential learning, mentorship and community that empower students. 

Learn more about Tom Miller’s story on the NC Tweener Talks podcast with Scot Wingo.