Shift in Focus

Universities groom entrepreneurs as vital part of business education

BY KAYLA PRASEK

When you enter Jonathan Puhl and Ben Olson’s office, the first thing you’ll likely notice is the constant buzzing of a 3D printer. Puhl, a fifth-year entrepreneurship major at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and Olson, a sophomore public administration and arts and communication major at UND, run 3C Innovators, a startup focused on creating 3D prototypes for other startups and students at a low cost.

The 3C Innovators office is located on the UND campus in the Center for Innovation, the home to numerous startups, including many like 3C Innovators which are student-run businesses. The Center for Innovation also serves as the hands-on side of UND’s entrepreneurship program. This fall, the center will become even more important to the university as UND opens its School of Entrepreneurship, only the fifth such school in the nation.

“Our vision is that the School of Entrepreneurship will be the epicenter of the entrepreneurship ecosystem and will be a source of innovation for the community,” says Timothy O’Keefe, chair and executive director of UND’s School of Entrepreneurship. “We want it to be a place where innovation happens and we can teach students to think innovatively and that they can do things that matter.”

At UND, students can solely major in entrepreneurship or they can double major, which O’Keefe says many students will do, as “most startups need that multidisciplinary approach. Startups are a team-based effort, so we want to teach students how to work with others with diverse backgrounds.” O’Keefe says entrepreneurship “is a truly integrative discipline and there’s a process by which different disciplines can be brought together to create innovations. Each of the disciplines can bring something unique to a project.”

The Center for Innovation, which was established at UND in 1984, will provide the hands-on experience entrepreneurship students need to be successful in their futures, O’Keefe says. “We’re the academic arm, while the Center for Innovation will be a source of practical experience for students. It’ll provide resources to start businesses and it’ll provide internships. We are partners in this process.”

The Center for Innovation is home to two technology incubators and Dakota Venture Group, the nation’s only fully-student managed venture fund where students make actual investment decisions. The center provides assistance to and resources for entrepreneurs and provides a home base for more than 40 tenants. It is also the EB-5 regional center for North Dakota and Minnesota.

“We are bringing entrepreneurship campus-wide,” says Bruce Gjovig, entrepreneur coach and director of the Center for Innovation. “Entrepreneurship is in engineering, in arts, in medicine. We are the teaching and learning lab for the students, and we have many students who run startups out of the center. You can only learn entrepreneurship from people who have been entrepreneurs, which is what we provide.”

Gjovig says students in the entrepreneurship program will be in the incubator and around the region, gaining a portfolio of experience in a variety of small businesses. “A lot of students don’t go straight into starting a business. They want to work at a startup and gain that experience in that environment before they start their businesses.”

However, some students start businesses while they’re still in school, like Puhl and Olson. Puhl set out to start a custom computer business in February, but by April realized he was on the wrong journey. “I kept asking myself why making a prototype was so hard,” Puhl says. “I realized that’s what I was supposed to be doing -- figure out a way to make prototyping easier for other small business owners.” It was at that point he brought Olson on to do the business and marketing side of 3C Innovators.

“Entrepreneurship pushes the bounds of students,” Olson says. “This is the most exciting, most nerve wracking thing I’ve ever done. We don’t know if we’ll succeed, but it’s the perfect time to do it because we don’t have to worry about taking care of a family yet. Any student thinking about starting a business should do it. The risk is worth it right now.”

Academic Shift

O’Keefe says there has been a shift in academia that has helped universities embrace entrepreneurship. “There has been a recognition that entrepreneurship is not Fortune 500 businesses. Startups are different, and a classic business education doesn’t always work well for startups, but 80 percent of jobs are at businesses with less than 50 employees. The vast majority of people with a classic business education don’t know how to start a business, which is where an entrepreneurship education comes in.”

At the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, students can minor in entrepreneurial studies and participate in the College Entrepreneur Organization. USD also hosts the Invent to Innovate competition. However, Venky Venkatachalam’s proudest accomplishment as dean of USD’s Beacom School of Business was the implementation of the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, which started in January with two entrepreneurs.

“One of the reasons I accepted the job as dean of the Beacom School of Business was because of the opportunity USD offers for the next generation of entrepreneurs,” Venkatachalam says. “Creating these opportunities in South Dakota is critical for the economy. We are committed to building the entrepreneurship program at USD.”

Venkatachalam says the program gives USD students the opportunity to take their ideas to the market. “They have these ideas but they need mentoring and coaching from real-world entrepreneurs for that extra dimension of learning. That dimension is where this program comes in. They continue learning out of class.”

The first two entrepreneurs were serial entrepreneur Ben Hanten and Sue Lancaster, who is currently director of business development at South Dakota Innovation Partners. “They came and spent time with the students, helping them with market research and the other aspects of fine-tuning business plans. By interacting with real-world entrepreneurs in the early stages of ideas, our students are more likely to be successful business owners,” Venkatachalam says. For fall 2015, the program will expand to four or five entrepreneur mentors.

As for why he is so passionate about expanding the entrepreneurial experiences at USD, Venkatachalam says the next generation of entrepreneurs is there. “College campuses play a critical role in not just educating but also in providing mentoring and coaching from industry leaders. We have to give them opportunities to succeed. Entrepreneurship isn’t a mainstream major but business schools should be engines of economic development. We need young, talented, energetic students who are the next generation of entrepreneurs who will create jobs for our state.” Venkatachalam says he is in the process of creating an entrepreneurship major at USD.

At the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City, students can participate in the Engineering Accelerator and the Butterfield Cup.“Entrepreneurship is a vital component to our department,” says Kyle Riley, head of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at SDSMT. “If our students don’t have a sense of marketing, they won’t make it in our world. Entrepreneurship is very important to industry.”

In one of professor Toni Logar’s computer science courses, students create products and the top seven products become the subjects for teams to refine, plan prototypes and write business plans. The teams then present their products to a group of local entrepreneurs, who determines the winner of the Butterfield Cup and invites them to participate in the Engineering Accelerator.

Logar says she wanted to spark entrepreneurship at SDSMT because “80 percent of new jobs in STEM are in computer science. With that opportunity, it shows a tremendous need and opportunity to become entrepreneurs to start in software engineering and move into design. At that point, they’re well on their way to starting businesses.” Logar’s idea for the course came from speaking with Brian Butterfield, an SDSMT graduate who worked at various local startups before accepting an adjunct instructor position at the school. Logar says they realized entrepreneurship was a viable career path for computer science students and the course was the eventual culmination of their goal to embed more entrepreneurship into the computer science curriculum.

The Engineering Accelerator is coordinated by Joseph Wright, associate vice president for research in SDSMT’s economic development office. “We proposed the idea as a catalyst for the work we’re doing,” Wright says. The first accelerator was held this summer and included 12 teams associated with technology either owned by the school or associated with the school. The accelerator’s boot camp was held in mid-June and featured five entrepreneurs who helped with training the students in all aspects of a startup. Wright says the next step is a partnership with USD’s business school to bring in their faculty and MBA students to push the teams’ business plans forward.

“We have great researchers solving real-world problems so it behooves us to drive that technology to the market,” Wright says. “At Mines, we can see the work being done to solve clear problems. By pushing entrepreneurship, we are rounding out and broadening the perspectives of our students. We want to drive research and help students get experience in entrepreneurship and help them be innovative and creative.” PB

Kayla Prasek Staff Writer

Prairie Business 701-780-1187, kprasek@prairiebizmag.com