Comments on ProfessorVC: Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?

Ludi, Thanks for sharing your experience. You def...

2010-11-11T13:56:53.559-08:00

Ludi, Thanks for sharing your experience. You definitely can't get a full appreciation for life in a start-up until you are on the inside. I'm doing a new academic experiment now - an incubator at Menlo College where we are bringing the start-ups to campus and giving the students an opportunity to see how they develop and work as interns. Will write about this in an upcoming post.

I think some of the core skills and competencies o...

2010-11-11T09:52:41.188-08:00

I think some of the core skills and competencies of entrepreneurs can be taught through experiential learning opps like your e-lab course but there's nothing like actually doing it yourself. I graduated from George Mason University with a self-designed degree in social entrepreneurship, choosing to focus on internships and courses that went beyond scantron tests and final powerpoint presentations.

But honestly, once I graduated and went to work for a start-up, none of it mattered. I've learned more in the three months working with a real-life entrepreneur on a new venture than in all 5 years of Community College and my BA.

But taking an "entrepreneurial" approach to my education did give me the familiarity with ambiguity and the ability to thrive in chaos that is critical in a start-up environment.

LK, Always good to hear from former students. Col...

2010-06-03T09:50:27.624-07:00

LK, Always good to hear from former students. Collaboration with engineering, computer science, life sciences, etc. is a big goal of ours at SJSU. The charter of the SVCE (Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship) is to work with all of the colleges in fostering entrepreneurship.

Great job, Professor Bennet! I would definitely ha...

2010-05-14T22:56:49.763-07:00

Great job, Professor Bennet! I would definitely have applied had there been a program while I was attending school. Thanks to you, immediately after I graduated I went on a few assignments for Glazer Capital which gave me the necessary experience that eventually led to my first "real" job out of college as a Pharmaceutical Sales Rep.

In terms of entrepreneurship, I think that SJSU is behind. We need a program that not only has a speaker series and mentor program, but also fosters collaboration among the Engineering and Business departments. Ideas exist there (Groupon) but most never get past the concept stage because there is no outreach for students to get their idea off the ground.

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2009-12-29T09:11:07.695-08:00

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No entrepreneurship can not be taught. It must be ...

2009-11-21T18:58:31.915-08:00

No entrepreneurship can not be taught. It must be experienced and suffered to feel the strength of the whirlpool that the entrepreneur will find themselves in. They must live, breathe, sleep, and be one with the startups ups and downs. You can't do it half way. It must be done with 100% emersion.

Tim, Thanks for stopping by ProfessorVC for virtua...

2009-11-20T08:26:39.453-08:00

Tim, Thanks for stopping by ProfessorVC for virtual office hours...I almost went to Duke. Made it to my final two, but went with Penn.

I do find that students generally start companies in areas they are familiar with for a couple of reasons. One, you need to be passionate about your idea and it is hard to be passionate about something with which you are unfamiliar. You are going to be spending most of your waking hours building the company and if you aren't passionate, it will be impossible. Two, you need to have some domain expertise. If you don't already have some level of expertise in the area, you'll need to go get it, probably through a combination of research and possibly an internship. Most companies are started to address a problem faced either in the workplace or as a consumer.

Asking about core values is a great question. I generally get asked about skills required (leadership, tolerance for ambiguity, risk taking, persistence, opportunity recognition, etc.), but values are often more important.

I'll put honesty and integrity at the top of the list. These are just for entrepreneurs, but will serve you well in any future endeavor. However, in the start-up world, they are essential. The whole process of building companies revolves around recognizing an opportunity, assembling the resources, building the company and harvesting the venture. Most successful entrepreneurs will repeat this process many times. If you are not transparent with your investors, you won't raise money the second time around, regardless of whether you were successful or not successful the first time. While Silicon Valley covers a large amount of turf, it is very small. If you have a reputation for cutting corners, not treating employees or partners right, it will become very difficult to do business.

Hope this was helpful and that you enjoy your social entrepreneurship class next semester.

Thank you for posting this. I'm a Duke underg...

2009-11-19T20:17:29.673-08:00

Thank you for posting this.

I'm a Duke undergraduate who'll be taking a class on social entrepreneurship next year, and it's great to see things from a professor's point of view beforehand.

I had two questions:

Do you find that the students who make entrepreneurial ventures do so in an area that they are already familiar with?

And what would you consider to be core values that every entrepreneur should keep in mind? Or are there core values at all?