ENTREPRENEURS RETURN TO OBERLIN

"Observe your universe"
That was the message Dr. Jonathan Merril delivered to students attending Inventing the Future: Entrepreneurship at Oberlin at Oberlin College in February.

The two-day symposium brought successful alumni and guests to the campus to discuss the many aspects of entrepreneurship. Students from other campuses attended as well.

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and a 1973 Oberlin graduate, opened the event with a standing-room-only Friday afternoon talk about "Liberal Arts, Social Responsibility and Ice Cream."

He told the students they do not have to choose between profit and social concerns, that there can be room for both.

Michael Alexin, a 1979 graduate of Oberlin and vice president of product design and development at Target, offered students his thoughts and lessons from inside Target.

Merril, a 1984 Oberlin graduate, talked about the many companies he has started, many of which are video-related. Merril has a medical degree, but he also pointed out to students that he won a video-making competition in high school.

His current company, Astute Technology, combines his education and his interests. The firm is a leader in distance learning in the fields of medicine and health care.

Getting to be a successful entrepreneur, Merril told students, was a matter of timing, and being able to "anticipate change" and fill a need.

But even observing a need and knowing how to fill it wasn't enough, he said. Perseverance was required too.

He explained that a few years back, a by-invitation-only AIDS medical conference was being held in New York. Merril was planning to record the conference and make it available on the Internet. There was a lot of interest among AIDS activists, who wanted access to the latest research.

The objection, Merril said, came from the medical journals, which traditionally have been the vehicle to publish breakthroughs. According to Merril, the journals suggested they wouldn't publish the research if it were first available online.

The AIDS researchers, anxious to share their studies, told the journals "so what," Merril said. The journals, Merril said, backed down, and Astute Technology took off.

And with 50,000 medical conferences annually, Merril said, there is plenty of opportunity to videotape scientific lectures and make them available for on-line distance learning.

At the Baldwin-Wallace Center for Innovation & Growth (CIG), Student Fellows learn about entrepreneurship and innovation through experience and mentoring:

Over the past six months, CIG Student Fellows, who represent a wide range of academic disciplines, have worked on projects for large companies, governmental organizations and even a co-op in Latin America.

     The projects included:

• Conducting interviews and literature searches to identify best practices for a small, entrepreneurial bank that wanted to better understand the potential for product and market innovations in the bundling of banking and insurance products.  After examining trends and preparing a report, a CIG Student Fellow had the opportunity to present and discuss her findings with the bank's president, the CFO and the director of marketing.
  
  
• Working alongside the political and labor leadership of seven communities in Cuyahoga County to evaluate regionalization of the fire and emergency services of those communities.The goal is improved service levels while not increasing costs. 

• Developing and implementing a marketing plan for shade-grown Ecuadorian coffee for a cooperative of small family growers.  This cooperative is trying to develop an economically sustainable enterprise to protect their land and the rain forest that is threatened by a large, international mining company. A CIG Student Fellow, a biology major, has been working with her Faculty Fellow to develop niche markets in the area to sell this coffee.

The CIG Student Fellows have the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and their own development as entrepreneurs and innovators through a series of lunch time sessions.The framework for these discussions is a value/virtue model that helps students complete a gap analysis of their current abilities and characteristics and where they want to grow. 

Forging successful careers in finance, fashion design, law and talent management. Those have just been some of the lessons brought to Kenyon College students in the two years of the Burton D. Morgan Lectureship series. The program, which brings outstanding alumni entrepreneurs to campus, is one of the most popular lecture series at Kenyon.

This year, Joe Lipscomb's lecture, The Double Bottom Line: Doing Well and Doing Good in Business, emphasized balancing profitability with environmentally friendly investments. Lipscomb and his employer, Global Environment Fund, invest in global companies that seek to provide solutions to environmental and energy challenges.

Eric Gaskins, the president of Eric Gaskins Design, returned to campus to discuss his runway successes in A Life Designed: Works in Progress, which combined a slideshow and a video to effectively illustrate how his liberal arts education made it possible for him to launch his own fashion label.

Peter White, an English literature major who has carved out a career advising others about the relationship between wealth and meaning, delivered a provocatively titled lecture, How I Failed in the World and Why it was Kenyon's Fault, which explored his effort to live a purposeful and fulfilling life. This effort led him to start his own consulting and educational firm, International Skye, which is best known for the Skye Summer Institute-an educational program for young adults focused on the responsibility and competence derived from living a meaningful life.

In the United Kingdom, the equine business is big business, and a group of students from Lake Erie College will soon get to see it up close.

The Center For Entrepreneurship and the Equine Studies Department have joined to offer an interdisciplinary equine entrepreneurship student international immersion learning opportunity this spring.

Students will get the opportunity to analyze the economic significance of equine industries of England and Ireland by focusing on entrepreneurial venture development for equine import and export, equine tourism and equine care and management.

Additionally, students - divided into teams will create business plans for international equine ventures.

The study trip is open to all majors. College officials say that since their goal is to mesh business and equine models, any student could benefit from studying these business-equine economic models.

Some of those students expected to take the trip will be heading back to campus in the fall with a new declared major: equine entrepreneurship.

Lake Erie College is adding the major in the fall to help prepare students for a career in the $39 billion horse industry.

DENISON STUDENTS BECOME INVENTORS 

When students from Denison University recently tried to build a better egg shell - with limited time and supplies - they learned just how difficult inventing can be.

The exercise was part of a week-long workshop, Entrepreneurial Endeavors, which launched the college's new Program in Liberal Arts and Entrepreneurship Education.

The workshop was held for the first time in January and enrolled about 20 students. It offered an intensive introduction to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. Coordinated by Denison faculty member Dr. David Przybyla, the seminar-style class addressed a range of  topics such as "Finding an Idea Worthy of Your Passion," "Understanding Constraints on Innovation,"  "Your Personal Entrepreneurial Vision" and "A Liberal Arts Business Career." 

The workshop featured a number of alumni speakers as well as hands-on exercises such as the challenge to create innovative packaging that would do a better job of protecting eggshells.

Teams of four students were allowed one hour and limited supplies, such as plastic straws and tape, with which to invent a new style of packaging.

"The students produced a range of contraptions that illustrated how difficult real innovation can be," Przybyla said."But what this challenge really gave students was the chance to stretch their imaginations, engage in intensive teamwork and apply ingenuity to limited resources.Those are great lessons to learn in an hour!"

Students were enthusiastic about the workshop, despite its intensive pace.

"The workshop helped me learn how to turn dreams and aspirations into reality," said Byron Hughey '09."I learned that if you work hard enough, you can make a living doing something you love."

The Entrepreneurial Endeavors workshop was the first in a number of initiatives that are part of Denison's new program.The new program was made possible by a grant from The Burton D. Morgan Foundation.

WALSH STUDENTS VISIT WALL STREET

Seeing is understanding, and in February, students from the Walsh University Entrepreneurship Experience traveled to New York City for a first-hand look at one of the most dynamic entrepreneurial cities in the nation.

The first stop was a meeting with Sheena Lindahl, president and co-founder of Extreme Entrepreneurship Education. Extreme Entrepreneurship is incubated in the offices of The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Even though it was President's Day, Sheena met with students and Program Director Janet M. Howard at her Wall Street office and spent time explaining how she and her husband navigated the entrepreneurial process while they were college students at New York University.  Sheena and her husband, Michael Simmons, used their passion, their work ethic and entrepreneurship education to launch a successful venture to teach entrepreneurship to college students across the country. They have been honored as Business Week's Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.

Next stop on the subway was Inc. magazine, where the EE students spent a few hours with the editors.

The students heard what it's like to be the information gatherers and clearinghouse of entrepreneurship, stories of memorable interviews and how the magazine operates under its own entrepreneurial culture.  The visit concluded with a tour of Inc. and Fast Company magazine operations. Inc. and its affiliated Web site will be heavily utilized during the 2008-09 Walsh EE program.

In their "spare time," the students interviewed entrepreneurs from the hot dog vendor at Yankees Stadium to the art dealer at the South Street Seaport - to report on the many faces and diversity of entrepreneurship.

The trip was subsidized by Student Government, the Walsh Business Club and the Leadership Institute. It culminated the Walsh Entrepreneurship Experience, which included a Business Plan Competition.

Sleeping in on a Saturday morning is common practice on college campuses, but for 17 students from eleven majors and nine faculty from six disciplines at The College of Wooster, it is a case of "rise and shine."

They are part of the college's innovative Social Entrepreneurship (SE) program, which teaches the theory and practice of applying business techniques to benefit not-for-profit enterprises. The theory of entrepreneurship and recent case studies are examined in an academic seminar that meets at 8 a.m. on Saturdays. To practice their learning, students in teams serve as consultants for ten weeks to Northeast Ohio non-profit organizations that are developing for-profit ventures to support their non-profit social mission.

This year, teams are working with one of five area agencies: the Viola Startzman Free Clinic; the Wilderness Center; the Nuhopp Center for children with learning disabilities; Youth for Christ, which ministers to troubled teens; and the Wooster Institute, a literacy project in Wayne County. 

The students have learned about their agency, conducted market research and developed project implementation timelines. The results will be presented both in writing (as a business plan) and live to the board of directors of the sponsoring agency.

The teams will all have presented their plans by the middle of April, and hope to see their ideas implemented.

Regardless of the outcome, however, students say they will have benefited from the experience.

The Morgan-Kauffman Northeast Ohio Collegiate Entrepreneurship Program (NEOCEP) is a collaboration between The Burton D. Morgan Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation with a goal of spreading entrepreneurship across five liberal arts campuses in Northeast Ohio. NEOCEP is a component of the Kauffman Campuses Initiative.®