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
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.