Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana

While universities are having little troubling attracting donors, it’s proving more difficult to find professors with the right mix of academic and business credentials to teach in the growing number of entrepreneurship programs.

“Good companies can get funded from anywhere,”

The best parts about "The Last Best Place" are the small communities around the state. Living and making a living in Montana’s rural towns is not only possible – but also preferable.

On March 7, 2005, a one-day conference will be held to explore the “best practices” of state leaders in formulating initiatives that spur entrepreneurship and economic growth.

Many of the students had solid plans to be their own boss someday.

Having learned from the toughest teacher of all, namely experience, that building a business is grueling work, I now advise students that it’s perfectly acceptable to put on a suit and go to work for a company that isn’t their own. I tell them that it’s a good idea to learn the ropes on someone else’s time and someone else’s dime.

The report profiles successful programs such as Walhalla High School’s (Walhalla, SC) comprehensive program where students create and finance their own businesses, and Nashville, Tennessee’s CEO Academy, where kids combine entrepreneurship training with learning about character and other key social skills

The idea of teaming up with university researchers caught on slowly at first at university entrepreneurial programs, where students were more inclined to pursue their own ideas for companies. But having witnessed young entrepreneurs take a quick route to business success in the Internet boom of the 1990’s, some have come to believe that working with ready-made technology is the best way to emulate them in the post-dot-com era, according to Jon Soderstrom, vice president for public policy at the technology managers’ group. At the University of Arizona, for example, 12 of the 20 teams currently in the McGuire program are now working on business plans based on technology transfer.

Center partnerships provide students exposure to startup entrepreneurial environments and to the processes for vetting business opportunities from available technological innovations. Together, we create a remarkably practical learning experience for students from all academic disciplines who want to learn about starting and sustaining companies.

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