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What Kind of Life Do You Want to Lead?
One of the best entrepreneurship classes I ever took ended with the professor asking each of us to write our obituary. The assignment instructions are below: Write your own obituary. Assume you die of natural causes on your 70th birthday and a close friend is asked to summarize your life in 300 words or less.…
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Making a Difference
A recent episode of the wonderful NPR program “This American Life” featured a segment about investing in new ideas (Episode # 412: Million Dollar Idea). In this segment, the focus was on putting together an elevator pitch that would attract the attention of venture capitalists. One venture capitalist also shared his insights as to what…
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Can Steve Jobs Serve As a Role Model for Other Entrepreneurs?
The resignation of Steve Jobs has been dominating much of the news recently. In some ways, this attention is to be expected given that he was the CEO of the most valuable company in the world, was responsible for a great deal of innovation in the consumer technology sector, and had an extremely devoted following.…
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We're All Entrepreneurs (Redux)
In an earlier post I mentioned how all of us could benefit by acting more like entrepreneurs. For the first (and probably last) time in my life, I have found myself ahead of a new trend. Yesterday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published an op-ed called “The Start-up of You” that contained the same…
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Networking Done Right.
Networking is hot. Business schools offer classes that teach students how to network. Many of the hottest start-ups are built around the concept. But how many of us really understand how to build a network? First of all, let me clear up the most common misconception about networking. It is not something you do to…
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We’re All Entrepreneurs
We’re all entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is someone who assembles the resources needed to turn an idea into a viable business. Entrepreneurs come in many forms – from the person who received a multi-million dollar investment from multiple venture capital firms for his/her Web 2.0 innovation to the person who owns a business that takes care…
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Why I Teach Entrepreneurship
Being an entrepreneur is not an easy choice to make. Although the media entices us with stories of entrepreneurs making millions when their firm is acquired for billions of dollars or goes public, the reality is that these events are quite rare. Many entrepreneurs do not expect – and are not likely to receive –…