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Guy Kawasaki outlines 10 steps to innovation in this terrific presentation. I’ve never had the opportunity to attend one of Guy’s talks, but judging by the video it would certainly be worth the time. Guy does a great job of telling a coherent story in an entertaining and engaging fashion.
There is an interesting article by economist Tyler Cowen in today’s NY Times that addresses the propensity for American teenagers to start companies. He suggests that academic and family leniency is responsible for allowing young entrepreneurs to flourish.
Compassionate Capitalism by Marc Benioff and Karen Southwick demonstrates that giving back is always a good idea and benefits the community, employees, and even the company. The authors clearly outline steps to integrate philanthropy into corporate culture while providing numerous case studies of small and large companies that practice successful corporate philanthropy.
To practice “compassionate capitalism” the authors suggest companies adopt the 1-percent solution– 1 percent each of equity, employee time, and profits devoted to philanthropy.
I recommend all entrepreneurs, or aspiring entrepreneurs, pick up this book as Benioff and Southwick point out that creating a culture of philanthropy is much easier if initiated in the early stages of a company.
USC English professor Ron Gottesman’s retirement speech included the following message (from Creating the Good Life by James O’Toole.)
“Invest in friends. There is no other instrument that pays such high returns…forget bonds, forget stocks, forget gold–invest in friendships.”
Auren Hoffman incorporates this philosopy into his concept of soft assets- your connections, knowledge, and reputation. Auren encourages people to focus on growing soft assets while young and suggests you build your connections and friendships by simply helping people.
“Invest in friendships” is terrific advice for everyone, especially entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is a highly social endeavor and soft assets will likely play an integral role in an entrepreneur’s success. Additionally, I’m a firm believer that the quality of your relationships is directly correlated to happiness in life.
How much time do you spend building and nurturing friendships?
A few months ago I was invited to attend a workshop hosted by the Council of Graduate Schools to discuss the role of entrepreneurship in graduate education. The goal of the workshop was to produce a set of recommendations for the advancement of entrepreneurship education at the graduate level. Much of the discussion focused on methods to incorporate entrepreneurship training into science and engineering graduate programs. Overall, there was great discussion amongst the 40 or so attendees (from universities across the country) and I’m anxious to read the resulting report that will be disseminated soon.
I believe there are 3 critical barriers that must be overcome to successfully foster entrepreneurship in science graduate programs:
1) Academic culture
2) Structure of graduate programs
3) Access to resources
I will address each of these issues in the coming weeks.
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