A New Approach To Teaching Entrepreneurship

Many entrepreneurship courses teach students “how to write a business plan.” This past term, Stanford introduced a new graduate-level course that takes a different approach to entrepreneurship education: rather that building a static business plan, emphasize customer development, agile development, business models and pivots. Steve Blank charts the progress of this experiment: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/03/08/a-new-way-to-teach-entrepreneurship-class-1-at-stanfords-lean-launchpad/?single_page=true

How Video Games Are Infiltrating Our Lives

One of my MBA students shared the following provocative article: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html?page=0%2C0 Interesting implications for entrepreneurship…

Seven lessons in teaching entrepreneurship

Check out Andy Hargadon’s recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-Matters-7-Ways-to/64841/ As Andy writes, “People tend to think that entrepreneurship refers to the innovation and risk associated with starting and running one’s own business, but that is misleading. The attributes that make for successful entrepreneurs apply in many careers and settings—whether taking a company in a new direction, starting a nonprofit venture, or developing a new research program—and are more valuable than ever before.” Don’t miss his seven lessons of entrepreneurship.

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?

Vivek Wadhwa thinks so — and I strongly agree. See his report of recent research results, along with some lively commentary, on Tech Crunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/can-entrepreneurs-be-made/

Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford starts on Sunday, February 21

For those of you who live in the San Francisco Bay Area or will be visiting next week, please come to Stanford University for one or more of the EWeek activities. It’s a great way to help us celebrate entrepreneurship. See the complete line-up for the week by visiting http://eweek.stanford.edu.

TED 2010

The 2010 TED conference wrapped up yesterday. Highlights included Jaime Oliver talking about the problems and opportunities resulting from our current food habits, and Blaise Aguera y Arcas demoing a new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft. TED conferences feature an incredble lineup of attendees, with diverse and inspiring speakers who address discovery, invention, imagination, and action, among other topics. To watch videos of talks from the 2010 and other TED conferences, check out: http://www.ted.com/talks

Website is now active

We’re thrilled to announce that the new website for Technology Ventures is live. Check out: http://techventures.stanford.edu for video clips of leading entrepreneurial thinkers, syllabi from related classes, a sample chapter from the book, and other resources. Many thanks to Forrest Glick and the entire Stanford Technology Ventures Program team for making this site a reality.

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to the blog site for Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise. Technology Ventures is a textbook and a set of accompanying resources, which provide business, engineering, and science students and professionals with a comprehensive guide to high-growth entrepreneurship. Drawing on the latest academic research and practitioner insights, Technology Ventures integrates clear theoretical frameworks with action-oriented examples and exercises. Its broad perspective on “technology,” including clean tech, information technology and the life sciences, ensure wide-ranging appeal to anyone with an interest in high-potential ventures.

This site provides a forum for the authors to share news, notes, and ideas on technology entrepreneurship, including bleeding-edge innovations, educational exercises, policy developments, and company activities.