Look-Look: Entrepreneurial Mentalities

According to Business Week online, a generation ago entrepreneurship was thought of as a last resort or for those who had nothing else to contribute. Over the last twenty years, with much help from the internet, that has completely changed. For example, Michael Dell started his multi-billion dollar computer company out of his dorm room at the University of Texas. Additionally, the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, dropped out of Harvard University to start his software company Microsoft. Richard Branson started the Virgin Group, an eight billion dollar company, when he was only fifteen years old. While these three men ventured through the untraditional path of business, they also paved the way for younger generations to pursue this once risky career route. Given the economy, problems with social security and the loss of pensions from most companies, entrepreneurship is now looked at as a “positive calling.” Colleges have also begun to teach classes in running a business or classes that teach undergraduate students how to use their entrepreneurial mentality.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/10/young_entrepreneur/index_01.htm

The business school at SMU has a class called the Executive Speaker Series where undergraduate business students are able to listen to entrepreneurs once a week. These entrepreneurs are usually based in Dallas and the Cox School of Business allows its students to hear how to start their own company. By listening to those who have done it, the students are able to get an inside track into starting and operating a successful company. This is a trend that is being seen around the country in very successful business schools such as Cornell University, MIT, Stanford and Columbia Business School. According to Business Week, in 1990 less than 300 universities offered a program in entrepreneurship growing to over 2,000 colleges nation wide. While the dot.com explosion may or may not have halted our economy when it died, it offered young people the chance to make a difference in everyone’s world and it gave them an opportunity to influence universities and colleges around the country.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051025_795457.htm