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Babson Offers Entrepreneurship Program for Public and Private Sector Leaders

Babson is offering the world’s first publicly offered program specifically to help public and private sector leaders create an entirely new internal capacity to formulate and implement entrepreneurship ecosystems in their societies using the most advanced concepts, methods, cases, and practice in the field. The program will be held February 29 to March 2, 2016 at BECC.

Fueled ​in part by the 2008 economic crisis, in part by geopolitical dis­continu­ities, and in part by surprising examples of economic growth, a global consensus is emerging among world leaders that entre­pre­neur­ship is a key strategy—some would say, the key strategy—for economic growth and development, according to Faculty Director Daniel Isenberg. “We see high profile programs encouraging entre­pre­neur­ship in almost every major city, region, and country. However, a painful gap exists between public leaders’ new commitment to entre­pre­neur­ship and their regions’ abilities to intentionally create programs and processes that will systematically and measurably stimulate entrepreneurial growth.”

Driving Economic Growth Through Entrepreneurship Ecosystems

Driving Economic Growth Through Entrepreneurship Ecosystems

In a July 2010 Harvard Business Review article, “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution,” Professor Isenberg describes the environment in which entre­pre­neur­ship tends to thrive. Drawing from examples from around the world, the article proposes that entrepreneurs are most successful when they have access to the human, financial, and professional resources they need, and operate in an environment in which government policies encourage and safeguard entrepreneurs. This network is described as the entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem.

Driving Economic Growth Through Entre­pre­neur­ship Ecosystems is designed to give public and private sector leaders:

  • The newest perspectives on entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem development
  • State-of-the-art assess­ment method­ologies and practical tools
  • The most relevant case examples of practical programs from relevant regions around the world
  • Under­standing of the nature of entre­pre­neur­ship and the entrepreneurial mindset

The two and a half-day, open enrollment, residential program consists of:

  • Case studies of real life global entre­preneurs and accessible global entre­pre­neur­ship
  • Case studies of entre­pre­neur­ship development in various types of economies
  • Assessments of each participant’s entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem’s strengths and weaknesses
  • Design and imple­men­tation of entre­pre­neur­ship development pilot programs “back home”
  • Simulations of entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem development
  • Action planning for identifying and activating the entre­pre­neur­ship stakeholders
  • Exercises to establish measurable entre­pre­neur­ship development objectives

Some of the specific topics that are addressed include:

  • Avoiding common mistakes in government support of entre­pre­neur­ship
  • Reducing confusion about entre­pre­neur­ship, micro-enterprise, SME policies
  • Setting entre­pre­neur­ship objectives and measure outcomes
  • Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem
  • Planning and implementing entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem action programs
  • Impacting the entre­pre­neurial culture and social norms
  • Developing effective public messaging on entre­pre­neur­ship
  • Using social media to development entre­pre­neur­ship
  • Estab­lishing effective public voice for entre­pre­neurs
  • Increasing the effectiveness and coordination of various entre­pre­neur­ship development agencies
  • Do’s and don’ts of using government funding to encourage the development of capital markets for entre­pre­neurial ventures (angel, private, family, VC, bank, public markets)
  • Differ­entia­ting among alternative funding vehicles (matching grants, royalty-based capital, accelerator financing)
  • The appropriate use and abuse of incubators, accelerators, and innovation centers
  • Entre­pre­neur­ship as a necessary precondition to clusters

Faculty Director Daniel Isenberg

Dr. Daniel Isenberg is Professor of Entrepreneurship Practice at Babson Executive and Enterprise Education. Since 1981, Professor Isenberg has taught at Harvard, Columbia, INSEAD, and the Technion, and has been an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Israel, and has been an angel investor in more than 10 countries.

Professor Isenberg is a frequent participant at Davos and the G20 and blogs for HBR,Huffington Post and others. In 2009, he established the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project (BEEP) to help societies around the world create the policies, structures, programs, and climate that foster entrepreneurship.

In this capacity, he has conducted projects in numerous countries, including Colombia, Brazil, Denmark, Canada, and the United States. Daniel has published several seminal articles in the Harvard Business Review, including “Entrepreneurs and the Cult of Failure,” “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution,” and “The Global Entrepreneur.” He is also the author of the Harvard Business Review Press book, Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University. ​In 2012, Professor Isenberg was awarded the Pio Manzu Gold Medal for “pioneering and innovative work in economic development,” signed by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Other Program Faculty

Vincent “Vini” Onyemah teaches Marketing Management, Business Development, Professional Selling, and Sales Force Management. Prior to joining Babson College, he taught at Boston University and Lagos Business School. He started two companies and worked in industry before pursuing his academic career. Professor Onyemah has more than 15 years of practical selling experience, starting when he was 12 years old in Nigeria working for his parents, and including work as independent sales agent in Europe. He has taught and conducted consulting projects in about 20 countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and North America. He also consults for the IFC/ World Bank and teaches in several international Executive Education programs.

Sherry Coutu serves on the board of companies, charities, and universities. She chairs Founders4Schools and is a nonexecutive member of Cambridge University (Finance Board), Cambridge Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Raspberry Pi, Zoopla, and the London Stock Exchange Group. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Linkedin.com and HBS European Advisory Board. Sherry is author of the ScaleUp report on UK Economic Growth, which was commissioned by the UK Government and a number of other papers on the subject of scaling up and is exploring “national and city dashboards” to be able to measure the degree to which a country can track, on a national basis, the degree to which their startup and scale-up policies are being effective.

Anders Hoffmann serves as Deputy Director General at the Danish Business Authority. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics. Mr. Hoffmann has most recently been employed as a Senior Economist with the OECD supervising a team of economists and statisticians and coordinating activites related to micro-policy benchmarking. Prior to this Mr. Hoffmann served in various leadership positions with the Danish Ministry of Trade and Industry. He has published articles in several major journals including Journal of International Economics at the Copenhagen Business School. Bill Kerr is a professor at Harvard Business School and Faculty Chair of the Launching New Ventures program for executive education. Bill works with companies worldwide on the development of new ventures and transformations for profitable growth. He also advices governments about investments in the innovative capacities of their nations.