Work(s) in Progress

Be Extraordinary

I love my job. Tomorrow I get to meet Gregg Vanourek, one of the authors of Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. I'm hoping that Gregg will be able to inspire our students in the Fall. What is Life Entrepreneurship? It is creating a life of significance through opportunity recognition, innovation and action. Leading an entrepreneurial life can change your experience from ordinary to extraordinary.

In this same theme, there is Chris Guillebeau's blog on the Art of Non-Conformity. I recently stumbled across his manifesto, A Brief Guide to World Domination - How to Live a Remarkable Life in a Conventional World (pdf). This brief (29 page) article starts with the premise that "You don't have to live your life the way other people expect you to." That's the core. If you don't have time for the full 29 pages, you can start with his post on The Decision to be Remarkable.

That's it really. Want to change the world? Just decide, then act. Everything else follows.

400

This is my 400th post since I started this blog. I did not anticipate having so much to say these last few years. Who knew? If only public speaking were as comfortable for me as blogging. 

Tomorrow we host our 7th Annual Business Plan competition. While the focus will not be on me, I am the one with the responsibility of moving the agenda along - introducing our judges and each company that will be presenting; showering our finalists with over $30,000 in cash prizes; and, remembering to point out and honor all of our eminent guests. For the past six years, the event was hosted by the prior executive director, a tall, graceful and elegant man. He could likely do this sort of thing in his sleep. He will be there tomorrow and I do not want to disappoint. I asked him whether he wanted to be the host one last time, but the baton has been passed on to me.

I am not tall, or elegant. I do not have a natural grace with words. And so, innate charm will be replaced by my earnestness and passion for our program. To me, this is the one day each year where the public can see our entrepreneurs' dreams made real. I love this.

67 Myths of Entrepreneurship

I just finished The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By by Scott A. Shane a Professor of Economics and the A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University (my undergraduate alma mater). The book received great publicity in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.

It's a terrific scholarly work that shattered some of my illusions of entrepreneurship. Scott crushes 67 myths or shares 67 truths depending on your perspective.

 Let's start with #1: America is NOT becoming more entrepreneurial. The rate of start-up creation has been declining over the last 20 years. This ties to #2 - there are many countries that are much more entrepreneurial than the USA.

A few things surprised (and depressed) me:

• immigrants are not more likely to start their own businesses (#18)
• networking skill does not matter (#19)
• venture capitalists fund less than one-tenth of one percent of all start-ups and account for less than two percent of all small business financing (#35)
• the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he would have earned had he worked for someone else (#39)
• compared to start-ups led by men, new businesses led by women have lower sales, fewer employees, less productivity, lower profits, and worse survival rates (#54)
• blacks create new businesses at only one-third the rate of whites and this pattern has persisted for decades (#56)
• encouraging start-ups is lousy public policy because ... we have a lot of evidence that these policies lead people to start marginal businesses that are likely to fail, have little economic impact, and generate little employment (#62)

All this painted a pretty bleak picture of entrepreneurship in America for me. Unless you are a job hopping, now unemployed, 40 year old white male who is sick of working for others (yep that stereotype is true) you might as well give up your dream. Sigh.

But the book smartly ended with some recommendations. What businesses are likely to succeed and drive economic growth? More importantly, what should we do? Scott's advice is somewhat like Castor oil - good for you but hard to swallow. Here is a snippet:

A strategy that revolves around increasing the number of new businesses created every year is flawed. Increasing the number of people founding construction firms and hair salons and taxi services that don't do anything innovative isn't going to do us much good. In fact, it might hinder our economic growth because new businesses are, on average, less productive than existing ones.

Instead of believing naively that all entrepreneurship is good, we need to recognize that only a select entrepreneurs will create the businesses that will take people out of poverty, encourage innovation, create jobs, reduce unemployment, make markets more competitive, and enhance economic growth. Therefore, as unfair as it may sound, we need to "stop spreading the peanut butter so thin." We need to recognize that all entrepreneurs are not created equal. We need to think like venture capitalists and concentrate our time and money on extraordinary entrepreneurs and worry less about the typical ones.

There is more, much more. Importantly, all of these recommendations tie to decades of data. Get your own copy: The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By

7th Annual Business Plan Competition

Three years ago, I was a competitor in the Bard Center Business Plan Competition. The first place winner for my year now teaches two courses in Social Entrepreneurship at the Bard Center. I am now the host of this amazing event. I am amazed at just how quickly things can change, how rapidly dreams can come true.

We are quickly approaching the May 1 deadline to submit a Business Plan. It’s also time to reserve your seats for this fun and exciting event.

Event Facts

The Award: This event will present awards to six aspiring entrepreneurs and their teams. The Bard Center Business Plan Competition seeks to promote the development of high caliber business plans, recognize the most outstanding plans with cash and in-kind awards from area businesses, and encourage the creation of new businesses. The specific objectives of the Business Plan Competition include:

• Encourage the commercialization of promising ideas and the creation of new ventures
• Be a catalyst for economic development and new business growth in Colorado

Cash Awards

• 1st Place $10,000
• 2nd Place $5,000
• 3rd Place $2,500
• 4-6th Place $1,000

Special Cash & In-kind Awards

• Best Bioscience $5,000
• Best Nonprofit $5,000
• In-kind over $80,000

When: Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Where: Grand Hyatt-Downtown Denver (1750 Welton Street)

• 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.  Six Finalists Present - 15 minutes followed by 10 minutes of Q & A
• 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.  Luncheon Keynote:  Bradley Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group
• 1:00 - 1:30 p.m.  Awards Ceremony Winner acceptance

Cost:

• Presentations: Free and open to the public
• Luncheon: $50 (PRE-REGISTRATION REQUIRED - please register by June 5.)

Sponsorship Opportunities:

• Platinum Sponsor $10,000
• Gold Sponsor $ 5,000
• Silver Sponsor $ 3,000
• Table (10 seats) $ 500 (no sponsorship benefits)
• Individual Ticket $ 50 (no sponsorship benefits)
• In-kind $ 5,000 (services available to finalists)

For more information or to reserve your seat contact the Bard Center at (303) 620-4050 or Bard.Center@cudenver.edu

The Bard Center for Entrepreneurship is a privately funded Center of Excellence that supports new business growth in Colorado. Celebrating our 10th year, more than 1900 students have participated in Bard Center programs, and annually over 20 companies are formed and supported by the Bard Center. The Center resides on the third floor of the historic Masonic Building in downtown Denver.

The Richard H. and Pamela S. Bard Center for Entrepreneurship was established in 1996 as a vehicle to foster economic opportunities in the Denver metropolitan area. Richard and Pamela Bard's generous endowment turned their dream into the reality of creating a program that would prepare future entrepreneurs for successful ventures, as well as to promote entrepreneurial spirit in the corporate environment.   

As part of the Business School at the University of Colorado Denver, the Bard Center fosters and promotes new business opportunities by advancing the teaching, study and practice of entrepreneurship and new venture creation.   The Center provides students with education, experience, incubation, funding, networking, and results!

Innovate or Die

This morning, I attended a breakfast seminar on Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMOs) hosted by the Colorado Bioscience Association. This is an area of the bioscience industry about which I knew very little, filled with cryptic acronyms like API, GLP, and cGMP.  Sadly, no one defined the terms before the presentation but I was able to get a sponsor to translate afterwards (these vary somewhat but Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient, Good Laboratory Practice, current Good Manufacturing Practice). Note to experts in any field: Please define your terms.

One terrific question was posed to the panel of experts, all representatives of local companies. How do you, or can you, compete with overseas lower cost companies? Best answer "Innovate or Die." Surprisingly this came from the largest CMO in the group - Roche.

Quantity vs. Quality

Last night we hosted Mike O'Neil from Integrated Alliances to teach a seminar for Bard Center students and alumni. Mike does training for people who want to better maximize their networking potential on LinkedIn. He had lots of specific and actionable advice for building a better LinkedIn network. My profile is improving but I'm still missing some of the personalization features recommended by Mike (you can see some on his profile).

As you can tell, Mike is a big fan of quantity and increasing the number of people to whom he is linked. He does not personally know and has not met many of his connections.

I'm one of those quality driven LinkedIn users. Do I know, like and respect the person to whom I'm about to link? The answer has to be yes to these questions before I will send out a request.

What about you? Is quantity or quality an either-or scenario or does having a large quantity of links promote networking quality? Mike suggests that if you are associated with a large network that it is more likely that you will be 2 or 3 degrees of freedom away from the person you really want to meet. He has a point.

I learned some fun things that I did not know about LinkedIn last night. First, groups, where did those come from? Look for the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship group to be formed soon. [Edit: LinkedIn approved my new group! If you are Bard Center affiliate (student, alumni, faculty, staff) you can join here.] I've been posting frequently on the blog run by my Alumni Association to keep people informed about upcoming news and events but I'd like to do more. I think a LinkedIn group would be a terrific way to get and kept everyone (students, alumni, faculty and advisory council members) connected.

Also, there is a hard cap on how many people you can directly invite to join your network. I did not know this. This is not an annual cap. This is a life long cap. After you hit this limit you must ask that those people who have not run out of invites request to link to you if you'd like to connect to more people. Even for paying members, it sounds like LinkedIn is reticent to grant more invites. I'm a very long way from the cap.

A room with a view

My new office overlooks the 16th street mall in downtown Denver.

I have not made many changes to my office yet except to bring in a coffee maker. The first image  is what you see when you walk in the door. My old office had brick walls on the inside. I'm enjoying the change.

Today I came back from a meeting over in the main business school building and walked into a big surprise. The enclosed note was from my "friends at Fairfield and Woods" wishing me success in my new position.

It completely made my day.

I had run into one of my friends from Fairfield and Woods at the awards event for the Technology Transfer Office of the University of Colorado.

Our governor, Bill Ritter, gave the keynote address. The state and the university system are focusing on key areas of excellence and opportunities for economic growth: tourism, sustainable energy, bioscience and aerospace.

Through my new position, I now sit on the advisory board for the technology transfer office of the university. As a scientist, I know that many of us are drawn into academic research for the pure joy of discovery. Invention disclosures and patents are not part of our thought processes. The idea of starting our own companies to develop commercializable products is rarely considered or it is considered something that someone else might do with our ideas.

How can I, as the executive director for one of our entrepreneurship centers, facilitate the transfer of the technology out of the university and into the companies in our communities creating jobs? How can we encourage and educate our students and faculty  to think about their research endeavors in a new way? I have been tasked with bioscience and building on our fledgling bioentrepreneurship program.

I love my new job.

New Job, week 1

I'm one week into my new job as the Executive Director of the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship.

When I was doing HR training last week one of the other participants asked me how I spend me day. I half-jokingly replied that my job was talking with people. Yes I do things, and write things, and will ultimately help build new programs but a large majority of my time is spent meeting  and talking with people. There are many people to meet: students, incubator companies, faculty, advisory council members, interested community members, potential program sponsors, etc.

Soon it will be time to begin advertising our annual business plan competition. We have some terrific new courses being offered for the first time this semester including one geared for people interested in launching non-profit ventures as well as a series of classes in bioscience entrepreneurship. I wish these courses had been available when I was student. I definitely plan to sit in on the classes I did not get the opportunity to take as a student.

I have been incredibly fortunate in that three of the people who have held this job in the past have been willing to meet with me, share their insights, and give advice and suggestions. The Chair of my advisory committee has been wonderfully generous with his time, advice, experience and insight.  More importantly, all seem willing to help or provide candid feedback going forward. In these early days, it is difficult to know in what ways I will need their help or in what areas I will need their insights. However, it is reassuring knowing they will be there if and when needed.

Week 1 summary: busy, optimistic