An Open Letter to ASU and its Entrepreneurship Initiatives
Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 3:00PM ASU, we have a problem. We have a push that is unprecedented in the university system in the United States; a push to become what our University President has called "A New American University." I personally believe this to be an extremely important quest, one which is crucial to promoting the growth and development of one of the nation's largest institutions. Part of this ambition lies with Entrepreneurship at ASU - a program that is supposedly designed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship with staff and students alike. This program, however, seems to have only demonstrated that ASU, the W.P. Carey School of Business, and the Entrepreneurship at ASU organizations are still stuck in the dark ages of a corporate driven world that favors pomp and fame over innovation and action.
I am calling out these three entities as the major players in all entrepreneurial activities sponsored by the university, and I am accusing them of doing just about everything completely wrong. As of the spring semester 2009, 62,476 students were enrolled at ASU. A recent press release from the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards praised ASU by honoring them with the number two spot on their list of student entrepreneurs at the university. There were 31. That is one-twentieth of a percent (.05%) of the enrolled students in a state where ASU says 98% of businesses are small businesses.
The worst part? I promise you they missed countless students still involved with the university who are managing and creating businesses everyday.
ASU celebrated Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for the last few days. The daily email that was sent out in conjunction with GEW had a section each day dedicated to what the University referred to as a "student entrepreneur." Three of the five featured were student employees of the university. No business. No startup. Now, maybe my definition is off, but working for the university and calling yourself a "creative problem solver" doesn't really convey the sense of responsibility and persistent action that many people believe the label "entrepreneur" requires. Why not talk to Sharon at Polytechnic who operates a personal shopping service, or Neil who contracted house painting in the valley, or Andrew (a freshman) who runs a web design and consulting firm, or Kim, a recent graduate operating her own copy writing and marketing consultancy. More importantly, were these 4 people in your count of 31?
There were a number of events hosted through the university that were positioned as helpful sessions to allow potential and current student entrepreneurs to learn and grow their ideas and businesses. Yet, there were no sessions on how to file incorporation paperwork with the Arizona Corporation Commission, or where to get help with business taxes, or resources on how to utilize ASU assets to assist in the creation and management of a student's small business. There were no panels of student entrepreneurs talking about their successes and failures. There were coffee meetups and cocktail parties.
As a small business owner, entrepreneur, and student, I'm insulted and appalled. ASU, you have got it all wrong. Because you are so focused on proving that you have entrepreneurial activity, you have completely forgotten that it should never have to be proven at all - by providing the resources and helping students be entrepreneurs, you should be at the very front of the list because your students will be happy to let everyone know that "I got here because of ASU." I've spent three and a half years in the W.P. Carey school, and almost all I've learned is simply how to work in a cubicle with an ignorant boss and small groups of people who are defective at their jobs. That's harsh, but true. I've also met dozens of brilliant and wonderful friends, professors, and administrators along the way. What frustrates me is that many of them see these problems and don't have any course of action to take to fix them.
I direct this letter not only to ASU, but to three important individuals. Michael Crow (President of Arizona State University), Robert Mittelstaedt (Dean of the W.P. Carey School of Business), and Terree Wasley (Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University). I am emailing a link to this post to all of you, and hope that this touches you in some way. I also have a request - I would love to meet with any or every one of you in order to give my time and effort to help make ASU all that it can be for student entrepreneurs, even though I am on my way out via graduation. I further challenge you to take the next step - find time when all three of you are available, and have a summit or town hall meeting to discuss these challenges and what can be done to promote true, real growth and innovation in the areas of business and entrepreneurship. I even have some lovely friends who frequent a co-working environment in Chandler who are willing to host such an event.
In the years I've been at ASU, my only regret lies in that I did not take action against the issues I saw as I traveled through my program. I now want to fix that, and wish to dedicate as much of my free time as I can to help push the programs and initiatives already instituted to their maximum potential, and help provide students at ASU the resources they need to start their own initiatives and continue to grow both the state and the university beyond what anyone ever expected.
I also request something of any student who reads this - give up your internship at some bank and go start a business. If you don't have money to do so, go ask your parents to introduce you to a wealthy friend (trust me, they have some). When you've finished fundraising and started your business, fail. Fail spectacularly. You will never hear anyone in the W.P. Carey School tell you that, and yet it is quite possibly one of the absolute most important lessons to learn in the business world. Congratulations - you just learned more than any internship is ever going to teach you.
Having a problem like this is amazing - the need is there, and the want, and the drive. With a little push in the right direction and some real interaction between the community and the university, the ASU Entrepreneurship Initiatives can actually start doing everything they say on paper.
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Reader Comments (12)
Jonathan
To sum up your rambling blather, you are smart. ASU leaders are stupid. You know entrepreneurship, they don't.
To sum up your rambling blather, you’re a twenty something little boy. Go away, grow up, come back and read what you wrote and be embarrassed for yourself.
@a real entrepreneur
I cannot wait for the day when I can learn from the things I did when I was young and become better, and that is what makes you and I different. Thank you for calling me out, as I fear there will be too much agreement with what I have to say and not enough challenges.
As another twenty-something idiot who graduated from ASU with a minor in Entrepreneurship as well as someone who worked for the Office of University Initiatives, I would have loved more support in the form of guidance, specific tools and resources, proper paperwork filing, etc. Instead, I took classes on other people's misadventures in startupland and learned....uh.....how to read a financial statement form a large corporation bringing in millions of dollars a year.
The program, in its current state, is missing the point. Severely.
Jonathan,
Your assumption that everyone's parents are wealthy or know someone who's wealthy is upsetting. Part of the greatness of owning your own business is knowing you did it yourself and had to struggle to make it happen - I doubt you would realize this given your current situation. Being handed everything will get you just about as far as those hands can reach with very little chance for personal growth.
Stop reaching out to the man to try and accomplish something for you. Start your own group, put yourself and the resources you've had made available to you out there for others. Stop your bitching and use this blog for something good. It would have been just as easy to list the important contacts and links you wish ASU had showcased in a blog post for others to view.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
@Jordan
I think that's the point of the post. He's reaching out to ASU and offering his help. He's not complaining for the sake of complaining. He's offering a solution to the problem as well as offering his free time to make it better. Pretty noble, if you ask me.
@Jordan
I fully plan to. That's why I said i'm willing to donate my time and efforts, because I want to be part of the change at the university to help the people that need the help.
I had a lot of assistance, and that is why this post is not about me. I don't refer to my situation, or what I do, or how I do it. It's about the others who have phenomenal ideas to make real, and need financial assistance or resource support or help in some other way. I personally will take on some of these challenges in order to make ASU an even more inviting and resource-laden environment then it already is.
Jonathan,
Allow me to reply, starting with three statements:
1. I am a Professor of Digital Media & Entrepreneurship at ASU, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Cronkite School.
2. I agree. You are largely correct. The Emperor has no clothes. Universities traditionally do a terrible job at entrepreneurship.
3. The problem is with all universities. And to our credit, ASU is heads and shoulders above the rest in changing the status-quo, so first consider the following:
+ Most students, particularly in a large 4 year university, are quite busy just trying juggle a full course load - not to mention trying to earn enough money for tuition, and balance social life. For most, the college years may be the one time of your life when you have the *least* time to devote to a new venture.
+ When it comes to entrepreneurship education (coursework) by nature universities are set up to teach courses than span a semester, maybe two. Entrepreneurship often does not fit neatly into typical academic structure. When the course ends and you get a grade- everyone tends to move on to the next course.
+ Sadly, with most universities, most instructors that teach entrepreneurship at the university level are not career entrepreneurs (it's very hard to get them to teach full time). Business, finance, and management - important components of entrepreneurship - can indeed be taught in formal programs.
Learning to be an entrepreneur from case studies and formal coursework is much like learning to be a basketball player from reading Sports Illustrated. Formal Entrepreneurship classes are similar: They help; but to train for the big leagues, you really need to be practicing with really good players and coaches.
+ Also - measuring entrepreneurial success at a university by the number of new companies is not always the best of measures. When most students take an entrepreneurship course, starting a brand new company is not the best outcome. What happens to the company when the semester ends? What happens when 2 members of the team have to take time off to finish a term paper?
+ Realize that small business is not the same as entrepreneurship. This is a common misconception. Sometimes they are the same, but most often they are different. Small business training is often well documented and reliable checklists available from the SBA. There are few reliable checklists for how to create the next Facebook.
+ The university does not operate in a vacuum: Entrepreneurship needs ecosystems in the community of successful entrepreneurs (not just successful small businesses) , and particularly it needs an infrastructure of available investment capital.
+ While the University can (and does) encourage entrepreneurs - entrepreneurship is really something that has to be driven by the "fire in the belly" of the young entrepreneur. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jerry Yang/David Filo (Yahoo!), Larry Page/Serge Brin (Google), Michael Dell etc - all started in Universities without being in any entrepreneurship (or small business) program.
While in each case, the University provided fertile ground for them to develop their ideas without a formal program, it was largely due to the entrepreneurial drive of the founders that made those ventures successful.
Oh. And all those legendary, university-bred entrepreneurs: They all had to drop out in order to truly make their venture successful. It's just a fact of life that almost no customer or venture capitalist is going to back an entrepreneur while he/she is taking a full course load. It's a hard reality that we are trying to change.
Those are just some of the reasons - not excuses, of why formally encouraging entrepreneurship at the university level is such a challenge.
Now then. In the last 2 years ASU has certainly led the pack in changing this state of affairs. Just recognizing all the issues list above, is a huge first step that most universities have not yet taken.
Most other universities concentrate entrepreneurial studies within the business school. At ASU, entrepreneurship is something woven into almost every department now.
The ranking that you referenced - means we've only just begun. The entrepreneurship programs at ASU have only recently been established. Seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, like myself, are being recruited to give students a real-world experience with entrepreneurship. And incidentally, there are many more incredible ventures that have been created here at ASU - they just haven't been showcased yet. The student founders are just too busy building their companies right now.
My compliments in realizing how far short most universities fall when trying to encourage entrepreneurship throughout student body. We've realized it for some time, and in the past 2 years have invested millions (perhaps closer to hundreds of millions) of dollars towards making ASU the model for University Entrepreneurship Education.
We've only just begun. Like any innovative growing new venture, give this one a chance take root and bloom.
CJ Cornell
Professor of Digital Media & Entrepreneurship
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication
Arizona State University
Entrepreneur-in-Residence
Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship
@CJ
I greatly appreciate the time you took to respond, and would like to respond to some things you said.
I understand that many students are busy with their coursework, especially those that are ambitious enough to take on multiple majors/minors/certificates and work and try and be social. I'm there now, and I understand it's difficult.
My point in referencing small businesses is that small entities started with one or a few people. Not 100. It has nothing to do with the cross over between small business and the word "entrepreneurship" - it has everything to do with those small businesses were started by entrepreneurs.
I understand the ranking is new and that our programs are new - what irritates me is that the programs are so busy saying how awesome they are, they completely skipped the step of looking at what entrepreneurship was already happening at the university.
Also - Gates, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Dell - none of them HAD to drop out of university. They CHOSE to. Many of their companies were small for years after they left university; there was no one forcing them to leave. While I'm not arguing they made a bad choice, I am saying that having the mentality of "to be great you have to leave" is just as bad as "to be great you have to stay."
I like the fact that we HAVE begun - it signals an important point of growth for the university, and it is apparent that can only lead to better things. However, you keep speaking of "most universities." Isn't the entire point of being the New American University to NOT NECESSARILY be like other universities? I'm sorry, but I simply cannot accept reasoning that implies "everyone else does it this way, so we have an excuse to continue to do it that way." That is completely backwards to ASU's ambitions.
Nor should you accept anything less excellence in all that you seek from the university. My point is that, for several hundred years, Universities have in the business of formal education - arts, sciences, and courses that are well defined and lend themselves to neat semesters, multiple choice tests, and letter grades that indicate how well you did. Entrepreneurship is much different. After several hundred years of universities getting it wrong, can we give it a little more than 18 months to see if we are getting it right?
PS - I personally believe you have done a good service by venting on your blog. At the very least, I think you will find that many will email you about many resources (and courses) that exist that you never knew about. So in some ways, maybe we're not doing enough marketing ; )
Great thoughts on the idea of 'entrepreneurship' being taught at universities.
I agree with you and CJ that the very idea of it can seem odd, especially when it comes to recruiting and retaining faculty, given that entrepreneurship and tenure-track academia would very rarely, if ever, attract the same type of person.
I remember when I saw a corporate bio that bragged that the CFO of the company was a "member of the Warren Berger Entrepreneurship Program" at U of A. My first thought was, wow what a failure. He went to a program that asserts itself as promoting entrepreneurship, and he ended up as a career CPA working as a glorified manager.
Entrepreneurship isn't another major like Physics, and it isn't another 'program' like community service. It is a spirit and attitude that the organization must support and grow.
And to be honest, I am horrified that 60% of the "student entrepreneurs" touted by ASU were employees. Really? An entrepreneurship program is designed to prepare people for a lifetime of service as an academic bureaucrat?
The problem is a university that promotes entrepreneurship has to actually be open to the fact that earning a degree isn't always the right thing. If someone is in your university and doing a great startup and finds it time to drop out. Embrace it. Encourage it. When a university gets to the point where it celebrates those dropping out to succeed, then and only then will they be getting entrepreneurship right.
6 months later, I'm afraid things aren't getting any better. Where is the workshop that instructs me how to setup an LLC or S-Corp, one thing that most of the 30+ EAP/Edson companies *should* be doing from day 1? Where is the list of recommended CPAs that ASU works with to provide cheaper accounting services? Where are the legal templates for an operating agreement to govern my new venture? Instead, Edson companies are throwing 20k down the drain to setup LLC's and operating agreements which largely can be done on your own for little expense, saving thousands to spend on the actual core product or service the venture offers.
Who the hell can I email at ASU to show me how to complete my Articles of Organizations, a set of paperwork so trivial to file, yet so protected through information asymmetry, that spending thousands with a startup lawyer (recommended by SkySong personnel) seems like the only solution. Does anyone at ASU, especially SkySong, know what the Arizona Corporation Commission's website is, much less what the actual department does? I think the answer is, sadly, no.
Where's the much hyped "mentorship" that Edson promises? The official answer to this is ASU Technopolis and the collection of 30,000 ft. view entrepreneurship courses which provide student ventures with little practical advice. Going through several of these courses, I've yet to leave any tangible piece of information that I could apply to an early stage venture (i.e. Edson companies).