Entrepreneurial Studies Endeavors

New Jersey colleges and universities teach students ‘everything entrepreneur’ to help better prepare them to meet post-graduation demands.

By George N. Saliba, Managing Editor On Aug 9, 2019

While millions of entrepreneurs have never taken academic courses on the subject, entrepreneurship programs offered at New Jersey colleges and universities can help students with either opening their own companies or – just as likely – helping them become effective employees in a dynamic, rapidly-changing 21st century.

It’s not merely teaching a college student to understand finance, create a business plan or develop marketing programs. Dale Caldwell, MBA, EdD, executive director of the Rothman Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Silberman College of Business at Fairleigh Dickinson University, describes at least part of what he terms an “entrepreneurial mindset.”

He explains, “The incremental mindset says, ‘Change is risky. I just want to stay [at my job]; let me do my job; I am doing it really well.’ [On the other hand], the entrepreneurial mindset says, ‘Staying the same is risky. I need to do [XYZ].’ Instilling that in young people and students can be helpful, no matter where they go with a career.”

The broader, panoramic view of what some experts term the “entrepreneurial mindset” might also include: appropriate risk taking; persistence when moving toward a narrow, envisioned outcome; motivation; overcoming challenges; and a mental agility that helps both business owners’ firms and/or employees’ companies attain success.

Even some traditionally conservative financial institutions are now seeking people who have an “entrepreneurial mindset,” Caldwell says. He adds, “One of the things Fairleigh Dickinson and a lot of good universities realize is that the goal is not for kids to graduate, but [for us] to prepare productive citizens; folks who can very quickly add value to companies.”

For those who head straight for the guts of true entrepreneurship, offering a service or creating a product is key, and Montclair State University’s MIX Lab (part of the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship) is central in instructing students on the second aim. Of note, the acronym MIX stands for “making and innovating for ‘X,’ where ‘X’ is the unknown.”

This, in part, may entail creating a minimally viable product (prototype) via the lab’s 3-D printing machines. This prototype can then be adjusted based on potential customers’ input regarding its positive and negative aspects. Yet the process is much more: who will be the customers and the competition and what will be the costs and revenue streams – and the value proposition? What problems does the product solve?

As the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship’s Interim Director Sharon Waters – and the MIX Lab’s Co-Director Iain Kerr – provided a wide-ranging and informative presentation of entrepreneurial studies for New Jersey Business, Kerr cited an example of a particularly unusually shaped bookcase on the MIX Lab’s wall, which was conceived when students were forced to design it without “right angles” and other, traditional factors.

Kerr elaborates: “Here’s what we are really teaching, and how this is relevant in the corporate world or when these students graduate: If you are in a company and you have 10 employees in a room, nine of them are going to be thinking like ‘this’ (he points to a standard bookcase), and our student is going to be thinking like ‘this’ (he points to the limited parameters bookcase). Then, when that group of 10 people reaches some kind of ‘blockage,’ they are all like, ‘Well, it is impossible; there is no way we can solve this problem.’ Our student is going to be the one that says, ‘Wait. Let’s overcome these blockages.’ He or she is going to come up with a solution that is something those other nine people didn’t think of.”

Echoing other’s sentiments, Waters cites the example of a dance major who wishes to work on Broadway, but the dream doesn’t come to fruition. Waters adds, “What am I (the dance major) going to end up doing, then? If I have tried dancing, and I have now realized that I am not going to be able to dance professionally, what am I going to do? One option is becoming an entrepreneur. Maybe I am going to open a dance studio. That’s another reason why we want to have students from all over campus … because anybody can be an entrepreneur. If that dance major has gone through even our first course or has gotten our academic minor, they have the tools, the skills and the mindset to then go and create their own job.”

Overall, being an entrepreneur is arguably more than being a small business owner, according to Fairleigh Dickinson’s Caldwell. For example, Caldwell says, “The small businessperson is making money, fairly happy with where they are; they are not looking to grow or buy. The entrepreneur says, ‘Well, I made a million last year; I have to make $3 million this year.’ How am I going to do that? There really is a difference between the entrepreneur and the small businessperson. Going to school can help someone become more of an entrepreneur than a small businessperson.”

Paul Penasbene, PhD, management, Larry L. Luing School of Business, at Berkeley College, relates that he has entrepreneurial brain-storming sessions with students who have generated such product ideas as a walking stick for the visually impaired that is GPS capable, or a database of a person’s wardrobe that would assist with helping him or her choose the best outfits for the day. It’s all part of the education Penasbene provides in his classes.

Referring to overall entrepreneurial teaching, he concludes, “What I want is students going out into the business world, earning a living, and then turning around, and saying, ‘I heard this; I knew this.’ They can equate what they are learning in the classroom with what they are actually doing.”

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