From Idea To Enterprise

Entrepreneurship Videos and Podcasts

Here's a sample of our 1000+ video clips and podcasts of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and other thought leaders at Stanford's Educators Corner (sponsored by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program). Just click on the video to play and see more at our site. Enjoy. Thiis is also the source of video clips included on the DVD that comes with the Technology Ventures textbook.

Always On Stanford Summit

For those of you poor souls that read this blog (thanks, by the way), our entrepreneurship center (Stanford Technology Ventures Program) is pleased to be the campus sponsor of this cool industry-related conference focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. It can be watched live at no charge. Visit this site today (1 August) and tomorrow to watch what's going on here at Stanford University ... click here.

I promise to do more posts, but I have said that before. :)

Roundtables on Entrepreneurship Education in 2007

I urge all entrepreneurship educators, especially those interested in teaching courses to students from all majors, to come to one or more of our Roundtable on Entrepreneurship Education (REE) conferences in 2007. The Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) will host or co-host four of them at Seoul in June, Barcelona in September, Stanford University (San Francisco) in October, and Rio de Janerio in November. The REE website has details on these conferences as well as archived material from the past.

Entrepreneurs Week (February 24 to March 3)

Throughout the week of February 24 - March 3, communities around the country will be celebrating EntrepreneurshipWeek USA, as designated by the U.S. House of Representatives, and we at Stanford will be no exception. In fact, the national organizers are so excited by what we are doing that they will be launching the national program from Stanford on February 24th during the Opening Ceremony. The theme of the week is "What is Your Big Idea?". A complete list of Stanford activities can be found here and almost all are open to the public and free.

I am particularly proud to moderate a panel on Wednesday, February 28th regarding how entrepreneurship can play a role in solving three of the world's greatest challenges: human health, environmental sustainability, and international peace and security. For complete details including the incredible list of panelists, click here. The entire Stanford and local community is welcome to join us live in person or afterwards via full the podcast or video clips on our Educators Corner site.

Entrepreneurship Teaching in the YouTube Era

The current revolution in online videos is good news for those of us teaching entrepreneurship. In addition to generic web sites like YouTube from Google, no-charge, entrepreneurship-specific archives are also available. At the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, our team has been producing Educators Corner site of hundreds of searchable video clips and podcasts focused on entrepreneurship for several years. Version 4.5 of the Stanford's Educators Corner was introduced in 2006 and we are pleased that usage stats continue to grow tremendously. Another excellent archive is the eclips site at Cornell University.

The textbook project team chose about 30 video clips from the Stanford's Educators Corner archive to create a DVD included at no-charge in the second edition of Technology Ventures. We chose clips for specific sections of the book, with icons in the margins of the text indicating when to refer to the DVD. The collection of these clips from the textbook are also listed on the Educators Corner site here.

Underway at Stanford

So sorry to readers for the lack of posts over the past couple of months. Let's see if we can break the logjam this month, because I have a long list of good stuff to share. We look forward to hearing from others in this wonderfully vibrant and growing community of entrepreneurship eduators around the globe.

One of my primary motivators for writing the Technology Ventures textbook with Dick Dorf was to satisfy the needs of my large introductory course on technology entrepreneurship designed for all Stanford undergraduates and coterminal studetns (i.e., those staying for a masters right after their bachelors degree program). Last week, the 2007 version of this course got underway with the second edition of the textbook being the "anchor" required reading. Please feel free to visit our course website and syllabus here to see how we use it at Stanford University for this particular audience of 75. Please note the site is not password protected as is the case for all our entrepreneurship courses affliated with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

I am lucky to teach this course with the assistance of Randy Komisar, who is a terrific venture capitalist at KPCB and the author of a wonderful companion book that we also assigne as required reading. It is called the Monk and the Riddle. It truly is a nice complement to the Technology Ventures textbook. I also recommend alternatives such as Guy Kawasaki's book called Art of the Start and David Goldberg's The Entrpreneurial Engineer.

We also use cases from both the appendix of Technology Ventures (e.g., Yahoo) and some great ones easily assembled at Harvard's collection. Given Harvard's scheme for distributing cases electronically, it is simple to put together an online reader and allow students to purchase them directly.

I will more comments on how things are going throughout the term. For those of you using the book at other institutions, please comment as you see fit. Of course, thanks again for giving it a try.

Happy New Year to all.

Websites for Second Edition of Technology Ventures

We now have two websites with complementary resources to support the textbook's second edition. One is at McGraw-Hill (http://www.mhhe.com/dorfbyers2e) and another at Stanford (http://techventures.stanford.edu). The McGraw-Hill site has a special section just for instructors. The Stanford site is open to all and features a full sample syllabus and lots of suggested video clips and additional materials from the Stanford Educators Corner.

Second Edition to Printer

The second edition of Technology Ventures is on its way to the printer as of yesterday. Expected date on the "shelves" is October 20, 2006. Congrats to everyone who has contributed so much to the project. Dick Dorf and I are grateful to the entire team including our colleagues in California, our reviewers, and all the McGraw-Hill employees and contractors.

Woo hoo!