Educating entrepreneurs: Campuses foster boom. Kids get feel for business

For Ball State University’s much-honored entrepreneurship program, the pressure and potential payoff have never been greater.

The niche it carved out 20 years ago has become a crowded field, with more than a thousand schools pouring resources into entrepreneurship programs each year.

Now many colleges are racing to beef up their entrepreneurship programs as a key way to turn the schools’ knowledge and technology into profitable ventures.

This competition is for more than just students. By portraying themselves as business makers and job creators, universities give themselves ammunition to lobby state legislators for more funding. And business schools also can appeal effectively to donors — many of whom are entrepreneurs themselves.

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Initiatives in state

Universities across Indiana recently have expanded their teaching of entrepreneurship. Many of these efforts emphasize hands-on learning, and try to start or expand businesses in Indiana. Several examples:

• Purdue University offers a certificate in entrepreneurship for any student from any discipline. The goal is to teach poets about profits. The program, started last fall, has more than 200 students enrolled.

• Anderson University, along with the city of Anderson, sponsors the Flagship Enterprise Center, a large business incubator. Anderson business students consult for firms at the incubator, which opened in May 2005. Professors from Anderson and Purdue also will offer classes there.

• Indiana University students pursuing joint law and MBA degrees staff the Entrepreneurial Clinic, which provides legal help to growing companies. The clinic, started in 2005, has served such firms as BioConvergence and Cook Group.

• Rose-Hulman Ventures, a highly successful business incubator and seed fund, allows students from Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology to help young companies grow. Started in 2000, its graduates include NoInk Communications and Suros Surgical Systems.

• Ball State runs an Entrepreneurship Dynamics Lab, where students help businesses or would-be businesses do sophisticated planning.

• Butler Business Accelerator, announced in 2005, will operate as a consultant to small firms ready to grow. Professors and students will run it, as well as a $2 million fund to make investments in promising firms.

Source: Star research

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By J.K. Wall
[email protected]

Full Story: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060409/BUSINESS/604090389/1003

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Kids get feel for business
Junior Achievement offers firsthand look

Sheila Roe
Arizona Woman

Forget think tanks and biotech incubators. Grade-school children play a major role in one of Arizona’s most powerful business development engines.

At Junior Achievement’s Exchange City in Tempe, a miniature town composed of 14 storefronts is transformed into a hive of commercial activity each day. Dozens of fifth- and sixth-graders come to learn about business and enterprise with hands-on activities, all aimed at making a buck.

The earlier kids start to learn about real-world business, the more successful they will be, according to JA’s research. That’s why Valley’s Exchange City, launched here in 2001, has become one of Junior Achievement’s fastest-growing programs.
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Each year, more than 10,000 Arizona schoolchildren participate in Exchange City for one day. It’s the culmination of 30 hours of classroom activities in six weeks that lead to the kids’ arrival at the little town.

Children go right to work creating, marketing and selling products to one another. They grapple with regulations, taxes and local government. For five hours, the town bustles with activity, before the kids return to the classroom.

The experience also teaches children what their working parents do all day.

Full Story: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0417biz-junior0417.html