In a recent Forbes article, Sramana Mitra asks whether business schools that emphasize raising venture capital over bootstrapping set up their students for failure in the “real world.” First-time entrepreneurs typically don’t have the track record necessary to secure venture capital, so if they see it as their only option they may never get their business off the ground. It’s a testament to CEE Professor Jeff Fahrenwald’s Entrepreneurship course that bootstrapping and venture capital are both given equal consideration as appropriate funding tactics.

Read the article at Forbes.

From the press release: “Don’t miss this compelling documentary from award-winning filmmaker Mary Mazzio, which chronicles the inspirational stories of several teens from low-income communities as they compete in the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s [founded by Kaizen interviewee Steve Mariotti] national business plan competition. What they learn along the way profoundly changes their lives and destinies.”

The film will be shown this Sunday, February 7 at 11 am Central.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has reported that patent filings are down for 2009. Is this a symptom of the economy, or of the fact that the time it takes to successfully file a patent is a serious barrier to innovative entrepreneurs?

Read Mike Drummond’s article at Harvard Business Review for more.

Jeff Cornwall of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University looks at the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor study to get a snapshot of the current face of entrepreneurship. One interesting, counterintuitive finding: the typical entrepreneur is getting older.

Read the rest at The Entrepreneurial Mind.

Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, talked recently with Fall 2009 guest speaker Dr. Jerry Kirkpatrick about why having a philosophical background helps businesspeople attain greater clarity and confidence in making important, ethically-charged decisions. Below are parts I and II of the interview.

Part I:

Part II:

An article by Vivek Wadhwa at TechCrunch explains why “VCs follow innovation, they don’t lead.”

The National Venture Capital Association claims in their Venture Impact report that companies like Microsoft and Google “…would not exist today without the funding and guidance provided during their early stages by venture capitalists.”

But what about the entrepreneurs who, as Wadhwa puts it, “risk their life savings, max out their credit cards and put their families in the back seat?”

Read the article here.

The Center is pleased to announce a new Entrepreneurship course, which will be offered for the first time during the spring 2009 semester by Professor Steve Kadamian. It examines the role of entrepreneurship in a changing and complex global business environment and the special challenges and opportunities entrepreneurs face when developing, starting and growing an entrepreneurial organization. Particular focus is put on writing and developing a business plan that turns an entrepreneur’s ideas and dreams into reality. See the Entrepreneurship course flyer (PDF) and view below Professor Kadamian’s brief video introduction to the course. For information on course dates and times, please visit Rockford College’s IQ.Web.

Excerpts from this interview appear in the January 2008 issue of Kaizen, CEE’s newsletter. Below is the full interview.

Michael Newberry’s painting career has spanned three decades. He has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States and taught life drawing, drawing and composition, and painting at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He has established the Newberry Workshop, sharing his knowledge through a series of online mini-tutorials. He has also published several essays and lectures on aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Kaizen: When did you first become interested in painting and start thinking about it as a possible career?

Newberry: I started painting when I was about eleven, after falling in love with Rembrandt’s art work. My grandmother bought me a book of his work for my birthday. I enjoyed going through it, and I began drawing and painting. But as far as a career, that didn’t happen until much later, in my twenties, when I started examining what the life of an artist would be and whether or not I had the skills to make it worthwhile to follow up on painting.

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A recent article in The New York Times reports that more colleges are now offering courses and programs in entrepreneurship, giving students the first-hand experience of starting and running their own business: “According to the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., more than 2,000 colleges and universities now offer at least a class and often an entire course of study in entrepreneurship. That is up from 253 institutions offering such courses in 1985. More than 200,000 students are enrolled in such courses, compared with 16,000 in 1985.”

According to the most recent Non-Employer Statistics published the U.S. Census Bureau, on average 2,356 people go into business for themselves every day. Their firms account for 78 percent of U.S. businesses and $951 billion in receipts.

“Among the fastest-growing industries are Web search portals (41.2 percent), Internet service providers (16.6 percent), nail salons (18 percent), electronic shopping and mail-order houses (12 percent), recreational vehicle dealers (12.1 percent) and landscaping services (11.1 percent).” The top five states in terms of growth in small businesses between 2004 and 2005 were the District of Columbia (9.6 percent), Nevada (7.7 percent), Florida (7.6 percent), Georgia (7.6 percent) and Utah (7.2 percent).