Entrepreneur as a change agent

When we say the word “entrepreneur” at the university, everyone immediately thinks we are referring to someone in the business school, technology transfer office or a start-up company.

So we avoid saying the word - - - - - - - - - - - -, until later in the conversation. It gets in the way of discussions we like to have about the potential of entrepreneurship as a lever for creating positive change, which most people at the university, especially students, embrace.

We think there is an eager audience for education focused on understanding and developing entrepreneurial behaviors, skills and attributes in many different contexts. Business is just one context. Others are social and creative.

The essence of entrepreneurship lies in creating and exploiting opportunities and pursuing innovation in practice. This involves learning, often by trial and error, how to design organizations of all kinds in different contexts and how to operate them successfully.

Universities are moving towards a more holistic concept of entrepreneurship, transcending the pure business focus.

We admire how the University of Rochester is equipping its students across the university to be successful in that regard. According to an AAC&U article “Building a Better Entrepreneurial Education,” it is aggressively fostering entrepreneurial skills in fields like education, engineering, nursing, and music—and in the business department, too. Courses in entrepreneurship are found in six schools on campus. The goal is to foster leadership, management, and team-building qualities.

Rochester’s brand of entrepreneurship is the “transformation of an idea into an enterprise that creates value—economic, social, cultural, or intellectual.” It focuses very little on the profit portion of the field.

In the AAC&U article, Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship Duncan Moore proudly points out: “Most of the projects being proposed by the students are not around business entrepreneurship, but social entrepreneurship,” he says.

“If we want to be sure our students will have a long career…they should have either international or entrepreneurial experiences," Moore says. “That’s not going to get outsourced.”

Next time you hear the word “entrepreneur," think attitude - towards engaging the world, and changing it.