How to Become an Entrepreneur

Written by Mary Welch Sunday, June 06 2010

It used to be that students attended business schools with the goal of running global companies. While that still may be somewhat true, more and more the goal is to become entrepreneurs and run their own companies. Colleges such as University of Alabama, University of Texas, University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University are increasingly offering degrees in entrepreneurship.

Patricia G. Greene, Olin Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship, Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., says the colleges are just reflecting the changes in students and their relationship with big business.

“There has been huge growth within the academic community in the last decade. Why? Most don’t believe or accept the idea of a lifelong career anymore. There is a growing appreciation for the fact that entrepreneurship is driving job growth and not only the U.S. economy but globally,” she says. “People change, lose jobs, develop different, and, perhaps more mature, interests. Most are fueled not by greed but by a desire for independence in how their lives are designed. Building their own business allows them to do just that.”

Colleges are responding to the market demands.

Babson offers a 12-month program that covers areas such as global wealth creation, technology entrepreneurship, how to get venture capital and private equity, enterprising families, family businesses, regional and national entrepreneurship, marketing, recognizing business opportunities and market conditions, and starting and building a company. It also blends its entrepreneurship programs with its Women’s Leadership programs to advance women’s entrepreneurship skills.

Lance Weatherby, startup catalyst at the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech, describes himself as “more of a classically trained person,” even though he is an alumnus of Indiana University, which has an entrepreneurship program. ATDC is a start-up accelerator that helps Georgia technology entrepreneurs launch businesses.

From where he sits, Weatherby says, he doesn’t see a lot of start-ups coming from people with entrepreneur degrees. “I see it coming from the technical side, people who are technically trained who start a company or from people in corporate America who saw an opportunity that their company wasn’t addressing and went out and attacked it by starting their own company.”

ATDC, made up of 320 companies, is closely aligned with the Georgia Tech College of Management, which does teach entrepreneurship. “They also have a program called TI:GER,” Weatherby says, “which pairs up a group of MBA students with some Emory (University) law students and some technology students. They look at a concept and try to start a company. That’s very valuable training. They find out that it’s very hard to start a company.”

The Arthur Blank Center for Entrepreneurship at Babson has become a “hub for entrepreneurship activities on campus,” Greene says. “We are striving to not only develop student entrepreneurs, but also teaching other professors on campus and around the world about entrepreneurship.”

An integral part of Babson’s curriculum is a hands-on project where faculty and local entrepreneurs help students hone their business plans by mixing the academic with real world experience.

“It certainly is not unusual for our students to graduate and use the ideas and business plans they developed in class to launch their own businesses,” Greene says. “It’s very realistic and close to what they will find in the business world. Many have been very successful.

“We at Babson are looking for new ways of working together forming businesses, acquiring and organizing resources, and the creation of value,” Greene says. “People ask me is there an “entrepreneur personality.” I maintain there is not one – even the ability to handle risk is questionable. After all, one woman’s risk is another’s piece of cake.”

Weatherby refers to a saying from sports: You can’t teach speed. “You either are fast or you’re not,” he says. “You can’t teach that, and it’s the same with being an entrepreneur. If you’re involved in a start-up, you have to be able to make fast decisions and make them in the face of uncertainty. I was with MindSpring from the beginning, and I hired 100 people at first, and they were mostly from large corporations. Within 90 days, I knew that most just didn’t have it. They couldn’t think or react quickly. You can’t teach that. Being an entrepreneur is like a drug. There’s an amazing thrill to it. You’re creating something, but not everybody likes that.”

Mary Welch is a freelance writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dawson Times, Plan Your Meeting magazine, and Atlanta Business magazine. Previously, she held many positions with Leader Publishing, including editor-in-chief of Atlanta Woman, editor of Business to Business magazine, and editor of Catalyst magazine. As editor of Business to Business, she assigned, edited, and conceptualized a series that was awarded Silver in the 2005 GAMMA Awards for Best Series. Welch was a reporter for the Atlanta Business Chronicle for eight years and freelanced for publications including Glamour, Advertising Age, South, Georgia Trend, and Oz. From 2000 to 2003, she served as vice president of media relations for Bank of America, during which time she authored Forever Green: A History and Hope of the American Forest with Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell.