One of the things that I worry about the most regarding the future of our country is our attitude towards innovation and entrepreneurship. Those principles are so ingrained in our culture that we take them for granted. We have adopted a cavalier attitude towards innovation and bringing innovations to market via the process of entrepreneurship, that it will always be there, that entrepreneurs will do what they need to do – daring to go “where no man has gone before.” Innovation and entrepreneurship are at the very core of our country, having brought us to a leadership position in the world. But, do we do enough to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship?
We certainly talk about it, we write about it, we teach it, we yearn for it, but do we really stimulate, support and condone entrepreneurship? Early stage funding remains elusive and hard to get almost anywhere in this country. Finding credible and eligible CEOs remains difficult almost anywhere in this county. Finding early adopter partners and beta customers remains difficult. As a country, we want entrepreneurs to take risks, to build new products, we want researchers to innovate the cure for cancer, but do we really embrace risk as a country?
In politics I see the focus on politics and the lack of bipartisan support for what we really need to stimulate the economy. Republicans and Democrats would be so much more useful if they would stop fighting the battle and just focus on winning the war! We need to do more as a nation to nurture entrepreneurship – from allowing young entrepreneurs to earn course credit for actually starting a business, to building ecosystems where business and technology can meet in fertile grounds for collaboration and innovation. We need seed funding at the earliest stages to build out technology and prototypes, and more funding at still nascent stages prior to fuel product launch.
This type of activity is logically focused within and near universities where innovation can occur from government funding and then be commercialized through programs focused around how to do this effectively. I envision incubation that is by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurship – employing a methodology that recognizes the extraordinary challenges faced by the process of innovating and commercializing and does something about it.
College credits for starting your own company is a great idea! How likely is seeing something like that take shape at a school like CMU?
Like you mentioned in your next article though, entrepreneurs will find a way. College credit or not!
Oh, I think we are getting close to having students be able to get credit for starting companies. Currently, students at the undergraduate level can take an independent study…not all of them know this of course. And it varies from department to department. At the graduate level, we are maybe closer in some departments than others. But, the true hardcore entrepreneurs will do it regardless!