Kogod’s New Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiative
Unveiled this spring, The Kogod School of Business’ new Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiative (SEII) and start-up incubator’s mission is to expand the school’s dedication to sustainable business practice. SEII aims to accomplish this through a combination of research on sustainable business practices, environmental advocacy and the implementation of a new venture incubator.
“The Initiative is really about harnessing the power of entrepreneurship and focusing on ventures that really create economic, environmental, and social progress—the true meaning of sustainability,” said Professor Stevan Holmberg, executive director of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiative.
Kogod first entrepreneurship course was offered in 1987 and last fall, the school added an Entrepreneurship minor. The SEII is the next step in offering a premier entrepreneurship experience as a Kogod graduate school student.
The Initiative’s start-up Incubator will match students and young alumni from across American University’s network with a business mentor and provide teams with modest seed money and space to get their business off the ground.
“Our goal with the Incubator is to really give these budding entrepreneurs the space and the resources to focus on building a successful product,” Tommy White, co-directors of the Incubator are Executives-in-Residence of the Incubator, said. “Kogod already has a lot of great curriculum in place to teach the building blocks of writing a business plan and identifying a consumer base.”
Teams will work with mentors to get their product off the paper and into consumer hands, while an advisory council comprised of successful entrepreneurs with strong personal histories of entrepreneurial success will provide addition wisdom.
“I’m very excited about [the initiative], it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve seen come out of Kogod in a long time. There’s lots of energy behind this,” said Mark Bucher, BA/SPA ’90, and founder of multiple D.C. restaurants, including BGR: The Burger Joint and Medium Rare.
“This is the perfect format for today’s students to gain real-world experience when it comes to starting a business. It’s going to give them a good dose of reality before they hit the ground running [after school] and that’s an amazing gift,” Bucher said.
