Google for Entrepreneurs

Celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship with the new Google for Entrepreneurs:

As Google turns 14 this month, we’re celebrating this creative spirit and officially launching Google for Entrepreneurs, the umbrella for our several dozen programs and partnerships around the world that support startups and entrepreneurs. 

Our focus is threefold:

1. Partnerships with strong organizations that serve entrepreneurs in local communities
2. Google-led programs to bring our teams and our tools directly to entrepreneurs
3. Placing relevant Google tools in the hands of startups as they are getting off the ground and ready to scale

Angry Birds and Overnight Success

Chris Dixon dispels The myth of the overnight success:

Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd game. They spent eight years and almost went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest’s CEO recently said that they had “catastrophically small numbers” in their first year after launch, and that if he had listened to popular startup advice he probably would have quit.

You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every “overnight success” is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.

Relationship Skills for Entrepreneurs

From Marty Zwilling Every Entrepreneur Needs These Relationship Skills:

Michael Schutzler, author of the book “Inspiring Excellence – A Path to Exceptional Leadership.” … urges people to focus on developing a few key relationship skills

• Leadership is a learned behavior, not a character trait.
  
• Listening is the most important skill for a leader.
  
• Communicating and storytelling.
  
• Acknowledging contribution.
  
• Negotiation is a practical skill for every leader.
  
• Too many leaders are focused on personal ambition.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Elaine Pofeldt offers 5 Daily Habits Of Successful Entrepreneurs. Great advice for everyone - not just entrepreneurs.

1. Plan tomorrow’s agenda today
   
2. Put your meetings on a diet
   
3. Find a way to manage e-mail that works for you
   
4. Never stop selling
   
5. Exercise regularly
   

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Teaching Entrepreneurship

I'm a big believer that we should be teaching our students entrepreneurship. Not just our technology and engineering students, but all students. Don't you want to empower our kids to take their passions and make something of them? I do!

Where do we start? Unfortunately it may not be with our business schools. Nathan Furr has some interesting thoughts on entrepreneurship - particularly on the failure of our schools to teach it.
Why Business Schools Struggle to Teach Entrepreneurship

Does it seem strange to suggest that business schools struggle to teach entrepreneurship? Many business schools today have entrepreneurship programs that are growing every year. So how can I claim that business schools struggle to teach entrepreneurship? Take a peek back at history and you will see why I can make this claim and what it means for how we teach entrepreneurship.

Do You Know Where Business Schools Come From?
...

So when was the first business school formed? Not until the 1880s (Wharton was the first business school), a few hundred years after the formation of the first large corporations and long after these firms were recruiting over half the class at Harvard to be managers. Indeed the first MBA wasn’t offered until 1908! Although it may seem shocking, it took quite some time for the education system to adjust to what the market really needed.[Sound familiar? - MQ]

Business Schools Were Founded to Train Managers, Not Entrepreneurs

Once business schools were formed, what did was taught at business school and who taught it? Of course b-schools taught management: meaning, how to coordinate, how to plan, how to increase efficiency, and how to optimize. Ultimately, the challenge was to train people how to manage a large organization attempting to execute on a largely known problem, like making more textiles or autos.
...

Where Does Entrepreneurship Fit In?

Entrepreneurship was not really a topic in business schools at all until recently. Just as entrepreneurship wasn’t a serious topic in mainstream economics and sociology until the last few years, entrepreneurship only emerged in business schools recently after a resurgence in rates of entrepreneurial founding and a burst in technical innovation. Indeed, entrepreneurship didn’t really exist in business schools until the 1980s and only recently has become a mainstream topic. Not surprisingly, the emergence of entrepreneurship in business schools has followed a similar pattern to the emergence of business schools themselves. Indeed, after being ignored so long in business schools, the natural question became, when we teach entrepreneurship, what do we teach? The answer provded surprisingly simple.

How Large Firm Theories Became Theories of Entrepreneurship

... many people assumed that entrepreneurial firms are simply smaller versions of large firms—a context in which our existing idea apply, perhaps with some modification. That meant that many of our ideas about how to manage large firms spilled into our ideas about how to be an entrepreneur. So for example, strategic planning for the large corporation became business planning for the small business. The divisionalized corporate management team structure (consisting of a VP of Sales, a VP of marketing and so forth) became the defacto structure for a new venture. The product development model in a large business became the model for new business development. ... In short, most of our ideas about how to [sic] teach entrepreneurship were subtly borrowed from how we manage large firms. (If you are interested, I can share my three generations of entrepreneurship education presentation which elaborates on this).

Where the Paradigm Breaks

But remember, as I suggested in earlier posts, entrepreneurial firms and entrepreneurial problems are about something very different than management. Entrepreneurship is about tackling unknown problems or solutions, whereas management is about tackling known problems. As a result, rather than managing for execution, startups manage for radical exploration and that means the process to do this, even the people to do it, are radically different than for managing known problems. It is only in recent years that the entrepreneurial community woke up and began to argue that the paradigm is broken. When you are tackling something fundamentally unknown, you can’t “plan” your way to success—doing so leads you to be overconfident in your guesses.

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Teaching Our Students Entrepreneurship

More important now than ever ...
Young Entrepreneurs Create Their Own Jobs:

THE lesson may be that entrepreneurship can be a viable career path, not a renegade choice — especially since the promise of “Go to college, get good grades and then get a job,” isn’t working the way it once did. The new reality has forced a whole generation to redefine what a stable job is. 

“I’ve seen all these people go to Wall Street, and those were supposed to be the good jobs. Now they are out of work,” says Windsor Hanger, 22, who turned down a marketing position at Bloomingdale’s to work on HerCampus.com, an online magazine. “It’s not a pure dichotomy anymore that entrepreneurship is risky and other jobs are safe, so why not do what I love?” 

Mr. Gerber argues that the tools to become an entrepreneur are more accessible than they’ve ever been. Thanks to the Internet, there are fewer upfront costs. A business owner can build a Web site, host conference calls, create slide presentations online through a browser, and host live meetings and Web seminars — all on a shoestring.

The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker:
Michael Arrington ran into

two entrepreneurs that have made a ton of money by selling their companies in the last couple of years. They’re both working on a slew of new projects, and the way they’re doing it is fascinating.

What does a person do after becoming fabulously wealthy?
...
But I’m hearing more and more about people who are simply setting up an office somewhere close to their multi-million dollar home in Silicon Valley or San Francisco, hiring a handful of hackers, and just building stuff to see what happens.

In many ways it’s analogous to the gentleman farmer – someone who farms, sorta, but doesn’t really worry about profit because they are independently wealthy.

I think it's more about just building stuff that interests them and if anything comes of it great, if not - no biggie.

What Skills Do Our Students Need?

Phil McKinney has some interesting thoughts on what skills kids/students need to be learning. He frames the discussion by comparing attitudes of parents in the U.S. versus those in China. Interestingly, Math and Computer Science skills - a key focus in the U.S. - is not high on the priorities for Chinese parents. I think this is probably due to the huge emphasis and investment the Chinese government has on Math, Science and Technology education. As a parent, I don't need to stress these skills at home, if the school system is already delivering them. Instead I can focus on filling in the gaps - the missing skills that my kids need. The question is, "What are these skills?"

The community within which I work - technology education - has become increasingly interested in stressing problem solving skills and more recently, entrepreneurial skills. While problem solving has always been at the core of Engineering, Math, and Computer Science, educators are starting to move away from the traditional approach of "showing" students how to solve problems, and instead focusing on creating an environment where students explore and discover how to become better problem solvers. It's not as easy as it sounds, because it requires educators to give up some control in the classroom, step out of their comfort zones, and adopt an approach to teaching and learning that is to most, unfamiliar. One area where I think we're still lacking is in creative problem solving. We still don't do enough in this country to encourage creativity. I'm not sure creativity is something we can teach, but it's definitely something we need to nurture in our kids.

The importance of entrepreneurial skills - traditionally in the domain of Business and Business Administration - are only now beginning to gain attention. As the economy has struggled and I've considered how to make my students more competitive, I come to believe that every student should be exposed to entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurial skills should be taught across the curriculum, so that students in every discipline - art, history, political science, engineering, and computer science - are all taught important entrepreneurial skills. These skills are valuable not only to the sole proprietor or students hoping to begin a startup business, but also students working in virtually any environment. Maybe we call it entrepreneurial literacy and begin to make it a college-wide requirement. There are already a handful of schools doing this - some only in specific programs, but this needs to become a national trend.

Don't even get me started on the last of the skills McKinney addresses - cultural understanding.

US vs China Parents – What skills do children need to be innovative?

A recently published report based on the Newsweek-Intel Innovation Survey, shows that US and China parents don’t agree on what skills are critical for children to have when it comes to innovation.

So, what are these critical skills?

Creative Thinking/Problem Solving Skills: Children need to be taught how to think rather than how to memorize. Its not about finding the one right answer for a test but instead the ability to search out all of the possible answer to a question to find the optimal solution. Critical thinking and problem solving skills should not be a stand-alone subject but instead taught across all subjects. For example, thinking through the range of options a given historical figure faced and then determining what would have been the alternative outcomes. Did that person make the right decision?

Entrepreneurial Skills: Its not longer about having deep expertise in a given area but to also have the broad understanding of how a given idea is transformed into an innovation. Understanding the structure, steps and process of running an organization is a fundamental skill that everyone needs to have.

Cultural Understanding: The world is flat and getting flatter. The ability to understand and collaborate with a global ecosystem of employees, partners and customers are table stakes. Without them, your at distinct disadvantage that will become more severe.

What are parents to do? Find opportunities for your kids to gain the experience and skills needed to win the emerging economy. Get them involved in Junior Achievement so they understand business and how to be an entrepreneur. Get them on a FIRST team so they learn how to invent, create and collaborate. Put them in situations where they have to work with others from different cultures such as an international internship.

While we as a society need to change the educational system to ensure we are producing the best employees possible, its the parents that can have the most positive and immediate impact. If we don’t, what jobs will our children be equipped to have when the creative economy takes over?

Silicon Valley Versus Boston’s Route 128

Great piece on Silicon Valley versus Boston's Route 128. I'm particularly interested in how the openness of Silicon Valley spurred growth as the corporate-siloed Route 128 lagged behind. Consider your own professional learning network (PLN) and your interactions with colleagues. How easily do you and your colleagues share information? Does your network - formal or informal - foster openness and innovation or are you trapped in a silo?

The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route 128 In The Dust:

In the 1980’s the Silicon Valley and Route 128 looked very similar—a mix of large and small tech firms, world class universities, venture capital, and military funding. If you were betting on one you’d have been wise to bet on Route 128 because of its longer industrial history and proximity to a large number of high quality educational institutions (Harvard, Yale, Brown, MIT, Tufts, Amherst) and proximity to Bell Labs and other large corporate research centers. You remember Bell Labs, right? It’s where the transistor was invented. Now, aside from big biotech breakthroughs, Boston is a distant second nationally to Silicon Valley in technology entrepreneurship. So, what happened to Boston?

A young professor at UC-Berkeley, AnnaLee Saxenian, wrote a book in 1994 which answers this question. At a time when Boston still thought it was the powerhouse of the tech industry, Saxenian declared Boston the loser in the tech race and explained why it would only fall further behind. This book was titled Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. It kicked off a firestorm of criticism from the Boston elite. Saxenian also alienated friends at her alma mater, MIT.

She noted that Silicon Valley had an amazing dynamism about it. There were extensive professional networks, job hopping was the norm, information was exchanged openly, and the culture encouraged risk taking. The Silicon Valley ecosystem supported entrepreneurial experimentation and collective learning. In other words, Silicon Valley was a very open network—a giant social networking site working in analog before the concept of such a thing even existed. [emphasis added - MQ]

This organizational mechanism was in sharp contrast to that of Route 128. Dominated by large, vertically integrated, and secretive minicomputer producers such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Data General. Technology, skill, and know-how were trapped within the boundaries of the large corporations.

Teaching Scientists and Engineers Entrepreneurship

Here's a great article from BusinessWeek, that details Duke University's efforts to integrate concepts in business and entrepreneurship into their science and engineering programs. Many community colleges have centers for and programs in entrepreneurship. While Duke's PhD+ sounds like a great idea, I think teaching entrepreneurship is something we should be doing at every level (two-year, four-year, masters, PhD, and maybe even HS) and in every program. Imagine architects, interior designers, programmers, network administrators, writing, journalism - virtually any discipline - to setup their own virtual shop to market and sell their services.

Turning Research into Inventions and Jobs

Another hindrance to commercialization of science: Very few scientists are equipped to go into business. They do not know the difference between an S Corp and an LLC. They don't know how to navigate a state or local permitting bureaucracy. And few have a clue about marketing or managing company finances in a way that could withstand an intense audit.

These mismatches ensure that stunning amounts of stellar science remains tucked in the lab forever.

If we want to create jobs, we must first train scientists how to start companies. Tom Katsouleas, dean of Duke University's engineering school, has a potential solution, called PhD+. For PhDs who wish to start companies and have marketable technologies, Katsouleas proposes that the federal government provide funding for training in entrepreneurship to teach the lab geeks how to get along better in the startup world.

The program offered by Duke goes even further than training and education in business, but also provides an incubator, seed funding, lab space, as well as connections to venture capitalists and successful entrepreneurs.

Here's how PhD+ would work. Marketing, finance, HR, and product development would all be taught to chemists, physicists, and computer science students and professors enrolled in the program. Scientists who successfully run a gauntlet of these courses would then graduate into an incubator program that matches them with successful company founders or senior executives in their field as well as top-notch providers of the professional services required to launch a science-based company. The scientists would also get a nominal amount of seed funding as well as lab space and other basic ingredients to help them achieve critical mass and bring their concept close enough to product stage to interest venture capitalists or angel investors.

Seth Godin Hosts a conversation with Facebook and Wikipedia Founders

Very interesting conversation. Well worth the watch.
Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind: The business of technology | OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN:

Seth Godin hosts a conversation with Facebook co-founder Sean Parker and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to find out what they know about social networking, branding and online marketing on OPENForum.com's "Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind" series. The takeaway — your business doesn't need to reach the entire world online, just those that want to buy your product.

Student iPhone App Teams

I've been advocating non-stop for colleges and universities to develop and roll-out iPhone, Google Android and Blackberry apps. Obviously some institutions don't have the wherewithal to develop apps in-house and will have to rely on outside consultants. Personally, I would love to see app development for higher ed become the domain of students working with our programming faculty, but that's not always feasible or timely. Even better, I'd love to see entrepreneurial student teams form their own consulting firms, maybe as an LLC and get in the business of developing apps. This idea occurred to me when I stumbled upon an ad for the iPhoneAuthors Development Team here. I can't vouch for them - I'm sure there are any number of consulting firms out there doing iPhone development and the list is probably growing. If your school has a great programming program and a business department with an entrepreneurial bent, this might be a marriage made in heaven.