This speech was given to the University of Michigan Board of Regents on December 17, 2009. The slides for this presentation are here. Also, a press-release about this talk can be found here.
Thank you! It is my great pleasure to talk to you about arguably one of the most exciting parts of our campus life today – a message that is spreading like wildfire around campus. It’s about empowerment and it’s about entrepreneurship.
.
Entrepreneurship is not just the work of two startup pioneers in a garage, it’s a mindset that changes approaches and is applicable to both big and small businesses. Entrepreneurship is about achieving, about passion and about calculated risk-taking. It’s about leadership, about continuous innovation and about perseverance.
The motivation for entrepreneurship originates in some of the most important global changes that face our university, and especially students in the College of Engineering. We are educating students in a time of rapid innovation and global connectedness. Our students not only compete with their peers within the US, but with young professionals who are educated around the globe. Also, the technologies used by our students – the way they communicate, the way they live – these technologies change even during their years here. They are more likely to use different communication tools in their freshman year than in their senior year just a few years later. As a University, we need to respond to that and differentiate ourselves. The value provided by the University of Michigan can no longer come just from our classes, but from the thinking and learning we give them on their way that allows them to get ahead. Entrepreneurial thinking is one such key tool our students want and our students need.
Here at the University of Michigan, the transition to a more entrepreneurial thinking is accelerated by forces that are equally fundamental, yet very close to home. We are unfortunately leading the Nation in unemployment rate, and we have done so for years. A map of Michigan’ unemployment rate tells an important story. But, it also talks about hope. The unemployment rate near Ann Arbor reflects some of the amazing things that have been going on, in part triggered by an engagement of our University which I had not encountered previously. A billion dollars of research expenditures from the University, and a tremendous focus on entrepreneurship through our partners, including SPARK, have caused our region to substantially escape a trend. However, the map also tells us a story that we have opportunities elsewhere in this State to create change in a positive matter.
These local forces have created openness to an entrepreneurial mindset to our University. Yet, we find ourselves in a conflict between two key values that initially may feel contradicting: on the one hand, we want to focus on the development of that entrepreneurial mindset in our students; on the other hand, we seek to create impact in our environment. We have thought about this a great deal and have concluded that we need these two values to grow together. We cannot create true change without a pervasive entrepreneurial mindset; 2-3 spinouts can be moved quickly, but not thousands of thinkers and entrepreneurs who see opportunity right here in Michigan. We also find in our classes that a focus on entrepreneurial mindset will bear fruits. Suddenly, students stop by and want to form companies. They are ready to try it, for real.
The University of Michigan is a big place and we can do amazing things. But, when it comes to entrepreneurship, any impactful and transformative program here has to be successful in two ways. First, it needs scale – we cannot just talk to 100 students on a campus of 10,000s. We need to think scale. Second, we need impact, and we need impact in a place where entrepreneurship is not as pervasive as in other areas. You cannot walk into a bar in and around Stanford without bumping into entrepreneurs, a massive and informal support system, capital and many symbols of success. In Michigan, we are building success without these boundary conditions. That has to become part of our planning.
The Center for Entrepreneurship, which I founded about two years ago, is a very small place by many metrics. It is now run by a serial entrepreneur, Doug Neal, and has a handful of staff. The Center is localized in the College of Engineering, but it is not limited to engineering. Entrepreneurship is by definition an interdisciplinary affair and we have therefore made sure that there are no conditions on any of our programs that discourage or even prohibit participation of students from any part of our University – and the sheer breadth of our participants are a testimony to the benefits of such a strategy. The Center now reports to me, the Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, who is focusing on entrepreneurial programs for students, faculty and staff around engineering. We cannot do alone what we seek to do and are strongly dependent on our partners, such as the Zell-Lurie Institute in the Ross School of Business, the Office of Technology Transfer, SPARK, and many others. Our programs form a three-legged stool: they are either focused on academics, on venture acceleration, or on community engagement. We are convinced that we cannot be successful with only two out of these three aspects of our program. I will address this later.
Responding to the two challenges of scale and impact, we have developed a multi-tier structure of programs we visualize in a pyramid. We have programs at the so-called engagement level, which are designed for their impact of breadth. It’s not about getting funding for a company today, it’s about thinking and teaching about that entrepreneurial mindset which is so central to it all. Members of our community who want to learn more about these values have programs available to them at the development level where basic principles are being taught. We strongly believe that entrepreneurship is a lab, not a class and thus we focus on experiential tools at this level. Then, we have the pinnacle programs which are for the rock-stars or “wanna-be rock stars” of entrepreneurship. Many of these people work on specific projects with true entrepreneurial outcomes and they need individualized support and interactions with specialists. In our top-tiers, we more often than not collaborate with the Zell Lurie Institute and the Office of Technology Transfer. We have other partners as well, often specific to certain disciplines.
After talking about the fundamental thinking behind our activities, let me give you some examples of our program-elements at the various tiers. First, I am focusing on the engagement tier and I am giving you 2-3 examples. Two hundred to three hundred students each semester sign up for the distinguished innovator speaker seminar which brings in an entrepreneur each week to talk about his/her entrepreneurial experiences. These are the most amazing stories and I very much encourage you to go on the CFE website and listen to some of them if you cannot attend. We record all of them and make them available to thousands of people.
We have a great deal of community engagement events. We provide space and opportunities to connect our students, faculty and staff with groups such as the a2geeks, the coffeehousecoders and many others.
Our prime tool of our engagement program is the MPowered-run 1000 Pitches competition which has led to tremendous visibility and reach in Michigan and beyond. 1000Pitches is the largest collegiate entrepreneurship competition in the US and had 2165 entries this year, more than double the number of last year competition. I want to stress: 1000 Pitches is run by the students, not us. We help where we can, but they barely need it anymore!
At the development level, we focus on academic classes. Consider this student team, for example, who invented a novel type of magnetic joint as part of their freshman class. They have gone forward, taken dedicated practicum classes and have managed to attract funding for their company they have built. They are now in the prototyping stage.
We have asked over 100 growth companies in Michigan what they want from the U-M. The most common answer is “talent” and the second more common answer is “research”. With the Business Engagement Center, and DRDA, we are developing programs that respond to these needs: internship programs or instant innovation, a process to deploy the power of University research for our small companies.
We are also building a mentorship program with mentors from the US and beyond to participate in our ventures. Some of them become active, after a certain time; some of them provide wise council and get involved, often after a long career in a variety of companies.
Pinnacle programs are focused on the needs of our entrepreneurial rock-stars. We need pinnacle academic programs that are becoming best-in-class, and we think that our Masters in High-Tech Entrepreneurship is such a program. We are currently developing this with the wise council of people in our alum community, the Business School and also some of our peer institutions.
The Bay Area Trip and Tech Fest are designed to bring a group of U-M and Ann Arbor entrepreneurs together with our Michigan team from elsewhere. The purpose here is to connect these teams. We travel as a team and get some of the most amazing experiences imaginable. In fact, these trips are life-changing for many of our students.
We opened a student business accelerator, in many ways unique among peer institutions. This accelerator is localized in the Google building, down the hall from SPARK and Bodman, two major partners in the Ann Arbor entrepreneurial community. We have great stories about companies in there. Let me share just one that moved me. Remember how I talked to you about 1000 pitches? Well, this competition has sponsors and the sponsor for the best iPhone application was Mobiata. Mobiata has been featured in many Apple TV ads, and is expected to have over $1M of revenue this year. Well, Jason Bornhorst, a member of Mobiata, took the microphone and said, “Listen guys, I won 1000 pitches last year. This year I am funding this award because I have been lucky to become part of a new company with a great team. This is for you with the challenge to do the same!”
I hope to have convinced you about the tremendous opportunity of putting our programs right in the center of the two goals we want to achieve: to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in our students, and to achieve economic impact in doing so.
I think we have great momentum, but I think we’re only at the beginning here. I spend much of my day and night hours focusing on four challenges that relate our students, our faculty, and also our University governance. I very much hope that we can focus on these topics in the not-too-distant future through a set of discussions that are important for all of us.
• How do we make it stick and grow? We have entrepreneurship and innovation in our DNA, but how far can we carry it so it becomes a value that is synonymous with Michigan, as is deep research and breadth?
• Our tenure and promotion processes have been highly successful over many years. But, how do we incentivize faculty who are doing the right thing?
• We may have to take a look at some of our rules and processes we may find to be discouraging for entrepreneurs within and outside of the University of Michigan who want to engage in our activities.
• How do we evolve our entrepreneurial ecosystem and broaden its scope and impact? I want our students to walk out of the classroom and into a café and bump right into someone who’s pursuing an entrepreneurial entity right now! That already happens – but we want it to happen more often!
My hunch is that we will all think about this again, at various levels of the University of Michigan experience.
How do we know if we are successful? We can see it in the lives of our students! With this final image of the MPowered President Lauren Leland and three of her members, I thank you for your interest and support and I look forward to answering any questions you might have.