From Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Model perspective, Purdue University is a "Laggard" in providing students the opportunity to take courses in Entrepreneurship. ENTR200, the first course in a five-course sequence leading to a Certificate in Entrepreneurship had its initial rollout Fall Semester 2005 with forty students enrolled. By Spring Semester 2007, the number of courses filled with eager students has blossomed to six ENTR200 sections, four ENTR201 sections, a Capstone section, and numerous electives. Purdue has joined the over 100 Colleges & Universities offering entrepreneurship-related courses of study. While behind the curve at the start, Purdue's program in entrepreneurship has hit full stride, and in some aspects (this Wiki and my course sections) are recognized as World-Class.
What follows in this and subsequent sections of this Entrepreneurship Wiki incorporates over fifty years of experience in starting and running companies, failures, successes, the latest in entrepreneurial thought and bumps in the road. Enjoy the ride.
Dean Kamen holds several hundred U.S. and foreign patents. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of the "ambulatory infusion pump"--a way of administering drugs that can move with a patient. Countless patients and their caregivers have benefited from the pump and the other ideas it inspired. Kamen is about inventions that so many need: wheelchairs that let the disabled venture confidently onto a grassy field for a picnic; dialysis machines that quietly wash poison from a body overnight and low-cost machines that can make dirty water clean or power lights with cow dung. And yes, Segways.
What drives Kamen, 55, is the satisfaction of solving a genuine problem. He doesn't try to analyze markets or predict revenues. He looks for stumbling blocks: The debilitating, unglamorous problems that stop people from going about their daily life. For most of his career, Kamen has hoped that people won't have to use his inventions. "You don't say to someone, 'I can't wait for you have to end-stage renal failure,' " so they can try out his latest dialysis technology, Kamen says wryly.
Kamen has been confronting problems head-on since grade school. At the time, one of the biggest problems he had was a familiar one: He hated to make his bed. His mother insisted. He analyzed the problem: He needed a way to straighten the sheets and covers automatically. Kamen affixed pulleys to the corners of his bedclothes and strung them with ropes. By standing at the foot of his bed, all he needed to do was tug on the ropes and the bed would make itself. "It was a great invention," he says, with satisfaction.
School frustrated Kamen. He focused instead on building things, including lighting systems for everything from museums to rock bands. His older brother Barton, in medical school, complained about challenges of delivering drugs to patients, including premature babies. Dean got to work. He invented a pump that delivered precise doses of medicine at precise intervals. "We put it in an isolet for tiny babies," Kamen recalls. "Then someone said, 'Bet you could stick it on a belt.' " Kamen soon delivered the first portable insulin pump for treating diabetics.
Kamen started a company to manufacture and sell medical pumps, but his heart wasn't in running a business. In 1982, he sold the company to Baxter Healthcare. He continued to work for Baxter and helped build its portable dialysis machine for people with kidney failure. Hundreds of thousands help patients every day.
He wound up starting an invention business: DEKA (for Dean Kamen) Research & Development, which is based in Manchester, N.H., and employs a couple hundred engineers and scientists on a broad portfolio of devices. Among their inventions: the iBOT wheelchair, which climbs over curbs (and was the core technology underlying the Segway), intravascular stents and irrigation pumps used in medical procedures, to name a few.
He looks for problems.
About 15 years ago, Kamen was bemoaning how few American students were interested in technology and invention. He started an engineer's version of the 4H Club, a nonprofit organization called FIRST which hosts robot-building competitions for high school students. The initial FIRST competition took place in a New Hampshire school gym in 1992; since then 100,000 kids have taken part around the world.
More recently, Kamen got interested in the need to provide clean water and electricity to villages in the developing world. "Now here's a real problem!" he says with relish. To solve it, Kamen turned to a very old technological idea--the Sterling Engine, which uses an external source to heat gas contained in a chamber; pistons move as the gas heats and cools.
Kamen says his improved power generators and water-purification machines are rugged enough and affordable enough for even remote villages. Two villages in Bangladesh are experimenting with the machines now, which run entirely on cow dung. Kamen has put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into developing the equipment--not because he's looking for a profit, but because he wants to solve a problem. "Now, there are three entrepreneurs running these machines," essentially establishing a mini power company for a village, he reports.
The final constant in the Kamen equation is patience. "It took 15 years for the diabetes pumps to take hold--and 20 years before the government started reimbursing for them," he says. FIRST has been in operation for 15 years and is finally getting worldwide attention. Segway? Still in its infancy, Kamen says. "The 'ah-has!' happen in an instant," he says. Winning acceptance in the marketplace, however, seems to take a decade or two--even when the need is palpable.
Think Different History of Entrepreneurship
Even though there is limited scholarly consensus about the defining characteristics, meanings and interpretations of entrepreneurship, the idea is as old as economics, if not older, and there’s good reason.
When early man specialized he was being entrepreneurial. One person became a hunter and developed new and unique tools and ways to hunt. Another person became a farmer and, you guessed it, developed new and unique ways to farm. Early man might not have used the word entrepreneur, but he was on his way to developing and refining, through centuries of discovery in incremental steps, what would one day be refered to as entrepreneurship.
The term “entrepreneur” was first described in the early 18th century by Richard Cantillon, a French economist. He defines the entrepreneur as the, “agent who buys means of production at certain prices in order to combine them” thereby creating a new product (Schumpeter, 1951).
Later in the same century, another French economist Jean-Baptiste Sayadded the idea that entrepreneurs were leaders. Say thought that an entrepreneur brings people together in order to build a single productive entity (Schumpeter, 1951).Joseph Schumpeter was the first economist to recognize entrepreneurship as the vital force that drives economic growth. In his Theory of Economic Development, written nearly a century ago, Schumpeter dismissed material and monetary gain as the prime mover of the entrepreneur, finding motivations like these to be far more powerful: (1) "The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity," and (2) "The will to conquer: the impulse to fight, . . . to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself."
During the 19th century, many economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and even John Stuart Mill discuss and try to grapple with new "business management" concepts that would eventually be cached as entrepreneurship. Smith and Ricardo possible undervalued the importance of entrepreneurship and stressed what they thought to be more modern management techniques in their writings.
Mill on the other hand, thought the concept of entrepreneurship was instrumental for economic growth. Mill, an Englishman, alleges that entrepreneurship requires "no ordinary skill," and backs his belief from the simple fact that no equivalent workd existed in the English language (at that time) that encompassed the unambiguous meaning of the French word entrepreneur (Schumpeter, 1951).
The necessity of entrepreneurship for production was first formally recognized by Alfred Marshall in 1890. Marshall gave us the four factors of production: land, labor, capital, and organization, in a treatise that later became famous titled Principles of Economics. Marshall believed that the driving force behind organization was entrepreneurship. He thought that organization was important because it was a coordinating factor that brought the other factors together.
Through organizing in a creative manner, entrepreneurs may generate new commodities or improve “the plan of producing an old commodity” (Marshall, 1994). Marshall believed that the easiest way for entrepreneurs to do this was by having:
1.A comprehensive understanding of their particular industry
2.By maintaining neutrality whenever possible
3.Adeptly predicting changes in supply and demand
4.Have a willingness to act even with incomplete information
Marshall, like Mill, thinks that entrepreneurial skills are uncommon in society and rare in the business world. He claims that the abilities commonly subscribed to an entrepreneur are “so great and so numerous that very few people can exhibit them all in a very high degree” (Marshall, 1994). He also implies that these abilities may be taught and anyone can learn the requisite skills necessary to be an entrepreneur. It is this principle that is the driving force behind many entrepreneurial programs throughout the world.
Marshall, unlike Mill, thinks that the opportunities for entrepreneurs are often limited by the economic environment in which they are involved (Marshall, 1994). “Additionally, although many entrepreneurs share various common abilities, all entrepreneurs are different, and their success depends on the economic situations in which they attempt their endeavors” (Burnett, 2000).
As you can see, entrepreneurship as a concept is continually developing. There are many theoretical evolutions of this concept as it becomes less vague and more useful. Marshall and many modern day economists believe entrepreneurship is the driving force behind economic organization. And some economists today, believe that entrepreneurship is enough of an important factor to be considered as the fourth factor of production that coordinates the other three (Arnold, 1996). Although many economists agree that entrepreneurship is necessary for economic growth, there is a continuing debate over the actual role that the entrepreneur plays in generating economic growth.
Schumpeter argued that the innovation and technological change of a nation comes from the entrepreneurs, or wild spirits. He came up with the German word Unternehmergeist, meaning entrepreneur-spirit. He believed that these individuals are the ones who make things work in the economy of the country. In Mark II, later in the United States, he pointed out that the ones who really move the innovation and economy are the big companies which have the resources and capital to invest in research and development. Both arguments might be complementary today.
Much is known about Benjamin Franklin as founding father, framer, statesmen, scientist, philosopher, author, master of the epigram, and fount of earthly wisdom that it is a small wonder we have little room left for recognition of his talents as entrepreneur and businessman.With all of his other talents, this great patriot also qualifies as the first American entrepreneur.
Wikiopedia suggests: For Frank H. Knight (1967) and Peter Drucker (1970) entrepreneurship is about taking risk. The behavior of the entrepreneur reflects a kind of person willing to put his or her career and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending much time as well as capital on an uncertain venture.
Still another view of entrepreneurship is that it is the process of discovering, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities, which go on to reify themselves in the form of new business ventures. In this model an entrepreneur could be defined as "someone who acts with ambition beyond that supportable by the resources currently under his control, in relentless pursuit of opportunity" (a definition common to entrepreneurship professors Howard Stevenson and Jeffry Timmons). Pinchot (1985) coined the term Intrapreneurship to describe entrepreneurial-like activities inside organizations and government. The concept is commonly referred to as Corporate Entrepreneurship.
The place of the disharmony-creating and idiosyncratic entrepreneur in traditional economic theory (which describes many efficiency-based ratios assuming uniform outputs) presents theoretic quandaries. William Baumol has added greatly to this area of economic theory and was recently honored for it at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Economic Association. (source: The Economist, March 11, 2006, pp 67)
Entrepreneurship is widely regarded as an integral player in the business culture of American life, and particularly as an engine for job creation and economic growth. Robert Sobel published The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition in 1974.
This is a class about entrepreneurship and innovation, not imitation done creatively. Therefore, we must note that economists generally agree that entrepreneurship and innovation go hand in hand. However, if someone hasn’t learned to be an innovator or simply is just not an innovator it is possible to imitate processes or products of others, and this is what Peter Drucker calls “creative imitation” (1985). David Burnett (2000) explains this best on his website:
“Creative imitation takes place when the imitators better understand how an innovation can be applied, used, or sold in their particular market niche (namely their own countries) than do the people who actually created or discovered the original innovation. Thus, the innovation process in less developed countries is often that of imitating and adapting, instead of the traditional notion of new product or process discovery and development.”
As anyone might deduce from reading about the history and evolution of entrepreneurship, many scholars have assigned different characteristics to entrepreneurs. By being aware of the various viewpoints and combining the different historical theories, we may define a set of entrepreneurship qualities that lead us to what entrepreneurship is today.
In general, entrepreneurs are risk-owners, coordinators and organizers, gap-fillers, leaders, and innovators and/or at the very least creative thinkers. Although this list of characteristics is by no means fully inclusive, it may help explain why some people become entrepreneurs while others do not. Finally, it is possible to understand that by encouraging these qualities and abilities, educators, businesses, and even entrepreneurial minded employees can theoretically contribute more to society, work and themselves.
For an interesting coverage of the entrepreneur in Economic History, (summary below) see here:
The Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs have many of the same character traits as leaders. Similarly to the early great man theories of leadership, however, trait-based theories of entrepreneurship are increasingly being called into question. Entrepreneurs are often contrasted with managers and administrators who are said to be more methodical and less prone to risk-taking. Although such person-centric models of entrepreneurship have shown to be of questionable validity, a vast but clearly dated literature studying the entrepreneurial personality found that certain traits seem to be associated with entrepreneurs:
* for example, in 1961, David McClelland? described the entrepreneur as primarily motivated by an overwhelming need for achievement and strong urge to build. * Collins and Moore (1970) studied 150 entrepreneurs and concluded that they are tough, pragmatic people driven by needs of independence and achievement. they seldom are willing to submit to authority. * Bird (1992) sees entrepreneurs as mercurial, that is, prone to insights, brainstorms, deceptions, ingeniousness and resourcefulness. they are cunning, opportunistic, creative, and unsentimental. * Busenitz and Barney (1997) claim entrepreneurs are prone to overconfidence and over generalisations. * According to Cole (1959), there are four types of entrepreneur: the innovator, the calculating inventor, the over-optimistic promoter, and the organisation builder. These types are not related to the personality but to the type of opportunity the entrepreneur faces. * Burton W. Folsom, Jr. distinguishes between what he calls a political entrepreneur and a market entrepreneur. The political entrepreneur uses political influences to gain income through subsidies, protectionism, government-granted monopoly, government contracts, or other such favorable arrangements with government(s) (see crony capitalism and corporate welfare). The market entrepreneur operates without special favors from government.
Characteristics of entrepreneurship
* The entrepreneur has an enthusiastic vision, the driving force of an enterprise. * The entrepreneur's vision is usually supported by an interlocked collection of specific ideas not available to the marketplace. * The overall blueprint to realize the vision is clear, however details may be incomplete, flexible, and evolving. * The entrepreneur promotes the vision with enthusiastic passion. * With persistence and determination, the entrepreneur develops strategies to change the vision into reality. * The entrepreneur takes the initial responsibility to cause a vision to become a success. * Entrepreneurs take prudent risks. They assess costs, market/customer needs and persuade others to join and help. * An entrepreneur is usually a positive thinker and a decision maker.
The New Entrepreneur See this link for latest thoughts on characteristics of today's entrepreneurs.
What Attributes Do Actual Entrepreneurs Consider Important?
Interviews of "real" entrepreneurs by Randy Allis and made available via one of his web sites provides interesting information for both the student and would-be teacher of entrepreneurship. While the sample is small (three), not random, and all the other statistical constraints placed on drawing conclusions are violated to some extent, meaningful insights are still provided. Refer to the table to the right:Ryan Allis Interviews
The results of these interviews is contrary to many of the basic tenants upon which the curricula in many college courses are founded. Ranked last are the need for a college degree, a foundation in accounting and finance, and basics of marketing. At the top is integrity, building a team, having good ideas and/or plans, leadership and communication.
In commenting on their rankings, entrepreneurs suggested they could "hire" people to do their accounting and bean counting, and marketing (confused with advertising it would seem), but it was their personal integrity, team-building skills, their unique ideas and how to bring these ideas to market, their leadership abilities, and ability to communicate to their publics all of the foregoing that made them successful entrepreneurs.
I (Hank) have an ongoing study in this area which will be incorporated later in 2007.
The above link provides a very interesting coverage of immigrants as entrepreneurs in the New York City area, and includes a video link. It is highly recommended reading for all student of entrepreneurship.
Half the Google-guys
Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin (right) are the co-founders of the very successful search portal Google. Mr. Brin is a Muscovite by birth, the son of a Soviet mathematician economist. His family, who are Jewish, emigrated to the US in 1979 to escape persectuion, and Mr Brin went on to get a degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland, before entrolling at Stanford University as a postgraduate. BTW, he did not complete his Ph.D. requirements at Stanford, but is on a lengthy "excused absence."
Intel and Andy Grove
Intel, the mother of all computer chip manufactures used in the majority of consumers computers today has an interesting background as an immigrant entrepreneur. Dr. Grove was born "Gróf András István" (in Hungary, the family name is first) to a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up he was known to friends as "Andris". In 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, he left his home and family under the cover of night, and emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York in 1957. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1960, graduating at the head of his class. After settling in California, he received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963. In 2006, he made a 26,000,000 USD donation to City College of New York, the largest donation ever made to that school.
Grove worked at Fairchild Semiconductor before becoming the fourth employee at the nascent Intel Corporation. He became Intel's president in 1979, its CEO in 1987, and its Chairman and CEO in 1997. He relinquished his CEO title in May 1998 and remained Chairman of the Board until November, 2004. Grove continues his work at Intel as a senior advisor.
Grove and his wife Eva were married in 1958 and have two daughters.
Pierre Omidyar was just 28 when he sat down over a long holiday weekend to write the original computer code for what eventually became an Internet superbrand — the auction site eBay. The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade PEZ candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book[2] and confirmed by eBay.
The site was launched Labor Day, Monday, 4 September 1995, under the more prosaic title of "Auction Web"; it was hosted on a site Omidyar had created for information on the ebola virus. Auction Web was later renamed to "eBay", after Echo Bay, Omidyar's consulting firm, when "echobay.com" was unavailable. The service was free at first, but started charging in order to cover internet service provider costs.
Jeffrey Skoll, a Stanford MBA, joined the company in 1996 after the site was already profitable. In March 1998, Meg Whitman was brought in as President and CEO and continues to run the company today. In September 1998, eBay launched a successful public offering, making both Omidyar and Skoll billionaires — 3 years after Omidyar created eBay. As of 2005, Omidyar's 214 million eBay shares were worth around $8 billion.
Purdue Entrepreneurial Team Example of Globalization of Entrepreneurship
Have a personal problem? Design a product to solve the problem and start a company to sell and service your newly designed product. That is what (2007) a team from Purdue's Entrepreneurship Certificate Program is currently doing. The problem: Currently in silent mode. The solution: web-based with connections to suppliers. The team: A student from Columbia, a student from Mexico, and a faculty advisor from the US. The technology: From France. The Target Market: The US. Stay tuned as this project develops. A business plan has been developed and is currently (1/20/2007) entered in the Ball State-sponsored Nascet 500 Business Plan Contest.
See here for a classic framework of studying entrepreneurship summarized below:
Uploading ....
starting and running companies, failures, successes, the latest in entrepreneurial thought and bumps in the road. Enjoy the ride.
"ambulatory infusion pump"--a way of administering drugs that can move with a patient. Countless patients and their caregivers have benefited from the pump and the other ideas it inspired. Kamen is about inventions that so many need: wheelchairs that let the disabled venture confidently onto a grassy field for a picnic; dialysis machines that quietly wash poison from a body overnight and low-cost machines that can make dirty water clean or power lights with cow dung. And yes, Segways.
to take hold--and 20 years before the government started reimbursing for them," he says. FIRST has been in operation for 15 years and is finally getting worldwide attention. Segway? Still in its infancy, Kamen says. "The 'ah-has!' happen in an instant," he says. Winning acceptance in the marketplace, however, seems to take a decade or two--even when the need is palpable.
force that drives economic growth. In his Theory of Economic Development, written nearly a century ago, Schumpeter dismissed material and monetary gain as the prime mover of the entrepreneur, finding motivations like these to be far more powerful: (1) "The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity," and (2) "The will to conquer: the impulse to fight, . . . to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself."
"someone who acts with ambition beyond that supportable by the resources currently under his control, in relentless pursuit of opportunity" (a definition common to entrepreneurship professors Howard Stevenson and Jeffry Timmons). Pinchot (1985) coined the term Intrapreneurship to describe entrepreneurial-like activities inside organizations and government. The concept is commonly referred to as Corporate Entrepreneurship.
By being aware of the various viewpoints and combining the different historical theories, we may define a set of entrepreneurship qualities that lead us to what entrepreneurship is today.
interesting information for both the student and would-be teacher of entrepreneurship. While the sample is small (three), not random, and all the other statistical constraints placed on drawing conclusions are violated to some extent, meaningful insights are still provided. Refer to the table to the right:Ryan Allis Interviews
as entrepreneurs in the New York City area, and includes a video link. It is highly recommended reading for all student of entrepreneurship.
Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin (right) are the co-founders of the very successful search portal Google. Mr. Brin is a Muscovite by birth, the son of a Soviet mathematician economist. His family, who are Jewish, emigrated to the US in 1979 to escape persectuion, and Mr Brin went on to get a degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland, before entrolling at Stanford University as a postgraduate. BTW, he did not complete his Ph.D. requirements at Stanford, but is on a lengthy "excused absence."
ndris". In 1956, during the 
the founder/chairman of the 