The IDEATE Method: Identifying High-Potential Entrepreneurial Ideas

Generating new ideas that create substantial value is at the very core of entrepreneurship. The IDEATE Method is an ideation method empirically proven to help students identify problems, develop creative solutions, and select the most innovate entrepreneurial idea.  Authors Daniel Cohen, Gregory Pool, and Heidi Neck emphasize the importance of deliberate practice and repetition as they guide students through each phase of the method: Identify, Discover, Enhance, Anticipate, Target, and Evaluate. Goal-directed activities and self-reflection questions help students develop their entrepreneurial mindset and skillset.

Dan Cohen, PhD, is the John C. Whitaker Executive Director and Professor of Practice at the
Center for Entrepreneurship at Wake Forest University. Over the course of his career, he has
taught entrepreneurship and strategy at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels. Since
coming to Wake Forest University in 2015, he has cofounded Startup Lab with Greg Pool and
completely revamped all aspects of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Before joining the faculty at
Wake Forest, Cohen was on faculty at Cornell from 2007 to 2015, where he founded and directed
eLab, Cornell's entrepreneurship accelerator program hailed by Forbes magazine as a major driver
of Cornell's ascent to a #4 national ranking in entrepreneurship. In 2012, Cohen was awarded Cornell's
Robert N. Stern Memorial Award for Mentoring Excellence. His academic career began in
2005 when he accepted a faculty appointment at The University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business.
While at The University of Iowa, Cohen earned accolades for teaching, advising, and mentoring
excellence. Cohen earned his PhD in management from Case Western Reserve University. He
studies how nascent entrepreneurs develop a passion for entrepreneurship and how, and under what
conditions, they form an entrepreneurial identity. He also researches how entrepreneurs develop
key capabilities, such as how to spot and develop valuable opportunities.
Before his academic career, Cohen had a successful 15-year entrepreneurial career that
included founding, growing, and successfully exiting his startup in 2005.

Greg Pool, JD, MBA, is a lifelong entrepreneur. He started businesses during college at the University
of South Carolina Honors College and while attending Wake Forest University for law
school and business school. Greg has founded and cofounded several businesses that he has exited,
as well as leading turn-around and relaunch efforts. Greg was the entrepreneur-in-residence at
Wake Forest University before becoming director of Wake Forest's startup accelerator, Startup
Lab, which he cofounded with Dan Cohen. Greg is now a member of the entrepreneurship faculty
at Wake Forest, where he specializes in helping entrepreneurs create early value in their companies.
In 2017, he was awarded the Russell D. and Elfriede Hobbs Faculty Award for Exceptional Support
of Entrepreneurship.

Heidi M. Neck, PhD, is a Babson College professor and the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of

Entrepreneurial Studies. She has taught entrepreneurship at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive

levels. She is the academic director of the Babson Academy, a dedicated unit within Babson

that inspires change in the way universities, specifically their faculty and students, teach and learn

entrepreneurship. The Babson Academy builds on Neck's work starting the Babson Collaborative, a

global institutional membership organization for colleges and universities seeking to increase their

capability and capacity in entrepreneurship education, and her leadership of Babson's Symposia for

Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE), programs designed to inspire faculty from around the world to

teach more experientially and entrepreneurially. Neck has directly trained more than 3,500 faculty

around the world in the art and craft of teaching entrepreneurship. An award-winning teacher, Neck

has been recognized for teaching excellence at Babson for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education.

She has also been recognized by international organizations, the Academy of Management and

USASBE, for excellence in pedagogy and course design. In 2016, The Schulze Foundation awarded her

Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year for pushing the frontier of entrepreneurship education in higher

education. She was again recognized as Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year in 2022 by the United

States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) for her contributions that have

substantively advanced how scholars think and approach entrepreneurship teaching and learning.

Most recently, Neck was the recipient of the 2023 Karl Vesper Pioneer Award from the Experiential

Classroom at Notre Dame for her work to expand the reach and impact of entrepreneurship education.

Her research interests include entrepreneurship education with a specific interest in building entrepreneurial

mindsets. Neck is the lead author of Teaching Entrepreneurship: A Practice-Based Approach,

Volumes 1 and 2 (Elgar), books written to help educators teach entrepreneurship in more experiential

and engaging ways. Additionally, she has published 40+ book chapters, research monographs, and

refereed articles in such journals as Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship Theory &

Practice, and Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy.

Neck speaks and teaches internationally on cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset and espousing the

positive force of entrepreneurship as a societal change agent. She consults and trains organizations of all

sizes on building entrepreneurial capacity. She is the cofounder of VentureBlocks, an education-technology

company, and achieved a successful exit with FlowDog, a canine aquatic fitness and rehabilitation center

located just outside of Boston. She also served on the board of a 100% family-owned, seventh-generation

land-management company in Louisiana, A. Wilbert's & Sons. Heidi earned her PhD in Strategic

Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a BS in

Marketing from Louisiana State University and an MBA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.