What is Entrepreneurship?

Being an excellent chemist, writer, accountant, or sociologist is often not enough: you have to know how to apply your knowledge in the marketplace. How can your knowledge be useful, relevant and valued? Entrepreneurship is taking the initiative to bring ideas out into the world. These ideas might be products, programs, services or ventures. The work might be socially motivated, economically motivated, artistically motivated, intellectually motivated, or some combination of the above. Actually bringing work out of the studio, the classroom, or the lab, and turning it into something other people can access takes a certain mindset and a special set of skills.

Why is ASU talking about it?

ASU has been talking about entrepreneurship because it believes that in order to serve our students, our faculty, our staff, and our greater community, we need to empower people to make things happen. As a university, we have the ability to catalyze our community’s development by making ideas accessible. Both one-person outfits and large organizations need entrepreneurial approaches to solve problems and stay competitive, and in our new global marketplace, these skills are going to be crucial for individual success and for Arizona’s success.

What is ASU doing about it?

ASU is creating opportunities for its students, faculty and staff to become entrepreneurs and to learn about entrepreneurship. By doing this, ASU hopes to stimulate Arizona’s economy, to help people to effect social change both locally and globally, and to map a pragmatic skill set onto students’ and faculty’s academic interests so that they can do what they love, and make it economically and socially viable. These opportunities are manifested in a host of programs, courses, certificates, and startup grants offered all across the university’s departments and campuses. You can access a list of those programs and courses at the Entrepreneurship at ASU web site.

How is UI involved?

UI leads efforts to support a culture of entrepreneurship at ASU. UI led the submission of a proposal to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City in 2006, and ASU received $5 million as part of the Kauffman Campuses Initiative. Along with the $5 million investment from the Kauffman Foundation, ASU is matching that with $5 million of its own, and has pledged to spend another $20 million on entrepreneurship-related activities. UI manages, administers financially, and provides the evaluation for this effort. In doing so, UI works with the Kauffman Foundation in a number of ways, from reporting progress on ASU’s Kauffman Campuses Initiative, to exploring new areas in research and innovation.