Campus Entrepreneurship Soars

Above: Sukatu Shah presents at the Greater Baltimore Technology Council's Mosh Pit! business plan competition

Last month, the New York Times wrote an article corroborating some of what I've suggested about the dramatic increase in student entrepreneurship on college campuses. The article, titled "Dreamers and Doers" points out that generational characteristics, new heroes, and enabling opportunities are pushing students to be more entrepreneurial and forcing universities to adapt.

Most research projects designed to characterize generations are worth less than the change in your pocket. But Don Tapscott's work is a rare exception. His new book "Grown Up Digital" hits the nail mostly on the head when it comes to what makes people my age tick. Two important Millennial characteristics he noticed that shape our brand of entrepreneurship are collaboration and iterative innovation. Millennials like working on teams, and we tend to view existing products, ideas, business models, and other cultural artifacts as fodder for remixing and recreation.

Additionally, the people we grew up hearing about and who are celebrated as successful are often entrepreneurs. As the article says:

Today’s students have grown up hearing more about Bill Gates than F.D.R., and they live in a world where startling innovations are commonplace. The current crop of 18-year-olds, after all, were 8 when Google was ­founded by two students at Stanford; Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 while he was at Harvard and they were entering high school.

The social entrepreneurship movement is introducing those same folks to people like Paul Farmer, Marc and Craig Keilburger, Greg Mortensen and others, providing role models that speak to our generation's commitment to civic engagement.

Finally, there are the action opportunities which are enabling and amplifying the entrepreneurial trends. Groups like Ashoka are firmly committed to youth having the chance to put their creativity into practice for the global good. Global exchange programs where students work with community organizers and social entrepreneurs in the developing world are exploding at places like Duke and Northwestern. As universities respond to student demand with more programs, it creates a positive feedback loop that drives more and more people to participate.

The article airs the criticism that entrepreneurship education crowds out other subjects, but I just think that's absurd. The job of undergraduate education is to expand people's horizons, teach them to think critically, communicate and make arguments, and to learn to act as global citizens. Core curriculum and disciplines are important, but its a bit silly to argue that papers about the Crimean War or teaching people how to use a library does more to those achieve those ends than a class which introduces people to folks who are organizing communities to change the world and then helps them think through their own big ideas.

Read the full article here.