Its that time of year again: Global Entrepreneurship Week. The organizers have done an amazing job this year and there are events all over the place. Get out and get active — there are over 5200 events that are listed on the website.
Entrepreneurship is the most powerful human activity and its great to see people celebrating, expanding and supporting it this week. Good one Kauffman Foundation and Make Your Mark for putting this together.
In addition to teaching New Venture Creation this... Read Full Story
Before there was Kevin Plank and Under Armour — Phil Knight was using his learnings, contacts, and education from Oregon and Stanford to launch Nike (originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports). Knight and Nike’s staying power can be witnessed by the recent controversy surrounding Marcus Jordan (son of Michael and Juanita), the University of Central Florida, and Adidas.
Basically, Marcus is an 18 year old basketball player at UCF and refuses to wear any shoe other than Air Jordans (pr... Read Full Story
Newmark’s Door has a great blog entry offering a compilation of criticisms of higher education in the U.S. Those quoted included professors, entrepreneurs, and . Those targetted include law schools, humanities, and computer science departments. There is something for everyone in this piece. Here are a few snippets and who they are attributed to.
Joel Spolsky (Entrepreneur):
Many universities have managed to convince themselves that the more irrelevant the curriculum is to the real world... Read Full Story
Under Armour and leading talent agency IMG have joined forces and among other things, will begin creating a standard of measurement for high school athletes looking to play in college.
As we all know, college athletics is a huge business and many global brands have come out of that part of the campus eco-system. Nike and Gatorade are two examples (as is Under Armour).
Both sides of the recruiting equation (athletes and schools) spend countless time, effort and money trying to find the right f... Read Full Story
In recent years we have heard about how entrepreneurial university administrators have become. Creating new models and charting new paths for their august institutions. A new study from the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that 23 Private University Presidents in the US are making at least $1 million a year. Hot Dog, bureaucracy pays! From an article by Mary Beth Marklein in the USA Today,
Here are the Chronicle’s findings, based on federal tax forms, of the highest-paid presidents... Read Full Story
A group of Colorado University engineering students has built a better chicken coop that is targeted to the growing number of urban chicken farmers in the U.S. From the article by Melanie Asmar of the Colorado Daily.
But the idea behind University of Colorado senior Jeff Troutman’s coop is decidedly down-to-earth. The architecture student set out to build a chicken-house that could be manufactured easily and inexpensively — and sold at an affordable price to Boulder’s burge... Read Full Story
Read anyone covering the state of higher education (or emails like those I receive from administrators at
Image property/courtesy of the Chicago Tribune Company
major schools) and you will hear about soaring costs and dwindling budgets. Much of it is true (though its a continual storyline in higher education), but there are always pockets of demand, growth and expansion to be found on the college campus.
Came across an article from the Chicago Tribune (via @SusanBeacham ) highlighting the gro... Read Full Story
Forbes.com has a cool feature where they ask self-made billionaires a bunch of questions to find their secrets. Worth a quick read. For example,
One lesson is clear: If you want to make serious cake, start a business. Of the 400 titans on our list, 274 are self-made–up from 270 last year. Six of the top 10 spots on the Forbes 400 belong to entrepreneurs (as opposed to those born into wealth). Their combined net worth: $166.5 billion.
Its a nice feature with pictures and videos and there... Read Full Story
Interesting WSJ article by Riva Richmond about one student entrepreneurs use of Twitter in starting his firm, soliciting user feedback in improving their product/service, gathering competitive intelligence on other firms in his industry, choosing a logo, and finding strategic partners. The startup is called TweetPhoto and the entrepreneur is Sean Callahan.
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Great little video of campus entrepreneur Marc Andreessen (Mosaic/Netscape, Ning; serial entrepreneur, billionaire) where he says that the future can be seen in University Research Labs. Original post at Growthology.
The entire interview can be seen at the Business Insider.
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