Unique Entrepreneurship Education in Business School

As more and more people look to become entrepreneurs, there is an increased demand at business school for education in entrepreneurship. Business school can be a great environment for entrepreneurs to learn business management skills, hone their ideas and even find funding and potential teammates amongst their faculty and classmates. Many schools even offer startup pitch competitions where would be entrepreneurs get the chance to deliver their ideas to local venture capitalists. However, many people would argue that entrepreneurship can’t be taught. That it is something that can only be done in the real world. That spending two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and opportunity costs won’t make you any better of an entrepreneur. Well business schools are taking a unique approach to try and address some of these concerns by offering entrepreneurship classes that blend academic research with real world experience. One way to do this is bring in serial entrepreneurs to teach the courses in school.
The Chicago Tribune did a survey of the two local business schools, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to see how they were creating this unique value proposition.
Northwestern Kellogg is a great example of a school that is doing more for entrepreneurial students. For example, they have brought on instructors such as Troy Henikoff, managing director of Techstars Chicago, Mark Achler, a former executive at Redbox, and Carter Cast, a Kellogg graduate and a venture partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
Linda Darragh who is the executive director of the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative said, “What we’re trying to do is actually blend the tenured faculty and the frameworks with adjunct and clinical faculty that can provide the tactical, experiential courses.”
University of Chicago Booth has brought in professors such as Waverly Deutsch, an active angel investor and advisor to startups including PrettyQuick, which Groupon acquired this spring; Steven Kaplan, who serves on the boards of Columbia Acorn Funds, Morningstar and the Illinois Venture Capital Association; and Craig Wortmann, founder and CEO of Sales Engine. The school’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation says its faculty features tenured and adjunct professors who “collaborate with the entrepreneurial and private equity communities, and bring their own entrepreneurial experiences into the classroom.”
However, there is a challenge in bringing in instructors who didn’t come through academia. One, managing a classroom of one hundred plus students for multiple hours is no easy task, especially for new professors. Also, the instructors need to make sure their classes have structure and are not just about telling war stories.
For the most part, students seem to be pleased with the results citing the ability to have a real life practioner, a mentor that can help them on their start up and combining academic research with real world lessons. “The amazing thing about MBA courses is that it’s this combination of theory and practice,” said Kristin Barrett, who earned an MBA at University of Chicago Booth in 2012.