Businessweek’s Year-In-Review Highlights Entrepreneurship Program at Columbia
On New Years’ Eve, Businessweek published an article reflecting on business school trends in 2013. One of the major trends that Businessweek observed was the shift in business school students’ career objectives. Students have increasingly shown an interest in entrepreneurship over Wall Street, and prospective business school students have shown concern that the traditional MBA will not prepare them to become entrepreneurs. Business schools have had to improve their MBA entrepreneurship programs to attract students.
In their 2013 reflection article, Businessweek highlighted the hands-on entrepreneurship course, Lean LaunchPad, which was founded by professor and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. The course is available at Columbia Business School, the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and Stanford’s engineering school.
Instead of teaching students how to write a business plan, Blank encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to know their customer and test their hypotheses about their business. In his class, teams of students begin developing a product or service, while talking to 10 to 15 people a week for feedback about challenges they face in their business. Students’ grades in the course are based on their weekly presentations about what they’ve learned by talking to people. Blank believes his approach teaches students to change their ideas to better fit their clients’ needs.
The Lean LaunchPad program has become successful. The National Science Foundation has adapted Lean LaunchPad to teach scientists how to commercialize their ideas. As of April, 75 professors per quarter were receiving training to teach the course. It seems like Lean LaunchPad’s unorthodox approach to teaching entrepreneurship has really resonated with institutions that want to train the next generation of entrepreneurs.
