What services do we deliver?

With a puzzled look, I am often asked, by faculty, what services does the VDC deliver?

And I always answer by first saying who our client is. The client always is the entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is an innovator who recognizes an opportunity to introduce something valuable, and who raises the necessary money, assembles the team and organizes an operation to exploit the opportunity.

In our university setting, entrepreneurs are easily recognized, the ones who create a new program, consortia, center, organization, product, process or company. Their motivation varies - might be social impact, commercial gain or creative expression. But all want to make a genuine different.

But they have a powerful vision for what they’d like to create at the university. And they want to find a way to make it happen.

A large organization's bureaucracy is not kind to entrepreneurs. It wears them down. We love entrepreneurs, though, because they are moving the university forward. We are really good at mobilizing the university behind them, lighting their load, speeding their progress, getting them recognition.

Usually we meet with the entrepreneur every month or so, helping them:

• Build a business case.
• Identify and obtain funding.
• Develop proposals and budgets.
• Create operational plans.
• Experiment with what works and doesn't.
• Set financial sustainability as an outcome.

We also recognize that for big thinkers, its the little things that make for out and out success, like help with university rules, regulations, agreements, the stuff they feel kind of lost trying to deal with.