Letter from the Co-Chair

Entrepreneurship Colleagues:

After 18 years as Dean of the Coles College and for the last 2 years co-chair of this Affinity Group I am stepping down from this roll to join our colleague Linda Hadley at Columbus State University where on August 1 I become the 4th President in the 50-year history of the University. Over the past 2 years, Patti Greene, my co-chair and I have marveled at the growth and success of the Entrepreneurship Affinity Group. Your active engagement in our panel discussions has been engaging and interactive. Panels comprised of deans and faculty from business schools around the globe have discussed a variety of topics and issues pertaining to entrepreneurship and business education. We have learned mightily from each other and gained exceptional appreciation for the quality of entrepreneurship research, teaching and outreach worldwide. Our group has enjoyed ongoing encouragement and support from AACSB International at all levels (thank you John Fernandes!) and we are grateful for that. The professional staff at AACSB has done an exceptional job of supporting the Affinity Group and this will continue. Special thanks to Tim Stearns who has done a great job leading the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management and serving as an important liaison for this Group. Kudos and thanks to my long-term friend, Jerry Katz the Coleman Chair at the Cook School at St. Louis U. for his outstanding work with this newsletter. Jerry is tireless in his efforts and we thank him for his ongoing commitment. Patti Greene has been wonderful and her leadership in the Group and at Babson resonates throughout the entrepreneurship world.

The Affinity Group is in great shape and in this my 30th year as a faculty member I am appreciative for all of your input, guidance and effort.

Tim Mescon   Kennesaw State University   tmescon@kennesaw.edu

From the Editor:

Why Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Is Important

While most entrepreneurship programs started in business schools, the market for entrepreneurship classes has grown far beyond their confines. Business school deans are right to ask how much of this is an enduring need, and how much is part of the current zeitgeist which enshrines entrepreneurs in magazines and on television.

What’s behind the push for entrepreneurship outside of business schools is a real need for training in how to run the businesses graduates start or will start a few years after graduation. In fact, some of the occupations with the highest levels of self-employment are for majors taught outside of business schools, as you can see in Table 1. In fact, of the 32 occupations with the highest self-employment rates, 13 are skills taught in colleges and professional schools, but most would be based on majors outside of the business school.

College-Trained Occupations with the
Highest Percentages of Self-Employeds

(Source: US Census, Current Population Survey, March 2007, www.census.gov/cps/)

Percentages like these translate into an ongoing need for entrepreneurship training for a significant number of students in majors outside of business schools, and therein lies the opportunity and challenge of cross-campus entrepreneurship. Groups like the Kauffman and Coleman Foundations have taken steps to stress cross-campus entrepreneurship, and to support it with grants to develop programs, often ones starting with business schools, but quickly involving other faculty and departments across the campus. Other foundations are also coming at this topic from those other schools. For example, the Keen Family Foundation just concluded a competition to fund next generation entrepreneurship centers and programs in engineering schools, but also stressed cross-campus ties (notably to business schools) in their efforts.

What business schools have to share are models and experiences with a variety of ways of teaching entrepreneurship. Not all the best practices of business school entrepreneurship education will work equally well in other disciplines, and some methods with awful track records in business schools may work supremely well in arts or science programs. The point is that business schools have a chance to help their colleagues across the campus by sharing experiences and resources. It will grow entrepreneurship across the campus, and as we have seen in new firm creation studies in the economy, a rising sea raises all boats. In this case, the more entrepreneurship across the campus, the better it is for all entrepreneurship programs on campus.

With that in mind, this issue of the AACSB Entrepreneurship Affinity Group Newsletter focuses on cross-campus entrepreneurship. Betsy Gatewood, a pioneer in cross-campus entrepreneurship, will be sharing her thoughts about the process and its prospects, and several member schools offer brief explanations of their cross-campus efforts. I have also included a listing of resources if you want to learn more about promoting entrepreneurship across the campus.

Sources For Entrepreneurship Across the Campus

Arts Entrepreneurship Educator's Network
http://www.ae2n.net/
This site has a strong focus on the pedagogy and institution of arts entrepreneurship on campuses, with syllabi, an overview of the field, and featured programs and educators.

Carolina Artistic Entrepreneurship / ARTISTIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP & TECHNOLOGY
www.artsentrepreneurship.com
This website, by Elliot McGucken, is far-ranging in its interests, including entrepreneurship and law, but has a strong focus on arts (including the more tech-savvy end of the arts). Also see his related site herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org whixch focuses on the Great Books and their relation to entrepreneurship. McGucken, by the way is a physicist.

Consortium for Liberal Education and Entrepreneurship
http://www.cofc.edu/entrepreneurconsortium/
This site is now more of an archive of one of the early efforts at promoting a national interest group focused on cross-campus entrepreneurship.

Educator’s Corner from Stanford Technology Ventures Program
http://edcorner.stanford.edu/
STVP is as close as we come today to having an engineering entrepreneurship education metasite (most other sites are those of individual majors). This site includes a full range of pedagogical materials (videos, cases, etc.) as well as curricula and conference listings.

Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts Program
http://entrepreneurship.wfu.edu/
Probably one of the best sites to see cross-campus entrepreneurship in action. See the resources section for articles and book recommendations. Other sections of the website include success stories from the Wake Forest University Program.

Kauffman Campuses Initiative
http://www.kauffman.org/items.cfm?itemID=475
The KCI is an ambitious program where schools were invited to apply for large grants ($3MM and more) to develop cross-campus entrepreneurship initiatives. Two waves of schools have been funded, and this site links their efforts together.

Self-Employment in the Arts
http://www.seasource.org/
This North Central College site, developed by Gary Ernst with support from the Coleman Foundation, parallels a series of regional and national conferences for SEA aimed at college students. The site abounds with how-to’s built from SEA presentations in the past, such as “Creating a Profesional Portfolio” as well as sections with resources specific to writers, media artists and performing artists.