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"The courses require very special faculty, who are academically qualified and who are also seasoned entrepreneurs. This is a very scarce resource." —Matko Koljatic, director, Escuela de Administración, Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago says Simon. "If they're not passionate, they're going to hate it. They have to be good thinkers, and they have to have the ability to make opportunities happen. They have to be com- fortable with ambiguity, and I believe they have to be driven to live their dreams." These dreams don't just include going into business for They also have to be imbued with entrepreneurial passion, who are considering coming to Babson, they'll say, 'Well, I invested in this company, and I got a good return.' They understand. That allows for the explosion of education." While Jones foresees a slowdown in the rate of entrepre- themselves. "We think the market really breaks down into five big chunks," Spinelli says. "The first chunk is students involved in new venture creation, who are going to start their own businesses. Then there are students who specifically seek out small, rapidly growing companies in market areas they think have great potential. Then there's the set of students who want to be in entrepreneurship from a finance perspec- tive. They want to be equity investors in some way—involved in venture capital, investment banking, small business lend- ing, or some other aspect of entrepreneurial finance. "The fourth group of students is drawn to the growing phenomenon of corporate entrepreneurship, where people get special projects for a new venture division within the cor- poration, or where they've involved in new product design and launch. The fifth big piece is students who end up in a more traditional career after attending Babson. But we hold that an entrepreneurial education gives them an advantage, too," Spinelli says. Jones of the Price Institute agrees. Even if the economy neurial programs that are added to university campuses, he's expecting to see growth in those programs at the communi- ty college and junior college levels. He also predicts more entrepreneurship programs will be launched in the K–12 arena to supplement programs like Junior Achievement and the National Foundation for Teaching Entre preneurship. That's a New York-based program for teaching entrepre- neurship to inner city kids, which the Price Institute sup- ports. In addition, he expects that the Price Institute will also start focusing on underdeveloped areas like Native American colleges and historically black colleges and universities. Business schools that do add entrepreneurial programs will need to have the support of their faculty—as well as the busi- ness community locally—to succeed. "You can't have a real entrepreneurship program without having executives in the community, and we're very blessed with them in this area of Colorado," says Simon. "But entrepreneurs are everywhere— in agriculture, in small businesses, in consumer products." She's hopeful that entrepreneurship will become so perva- limits the number of business startups that can be successful, graduates with an entrepreneurial bent "are equally valuable within large companies," he says. "There's this concept of the intrapreneur, the person within a large organization who is allowed to act entrepreneurially, to pursue new opportunities with the capital support of a big company. This is a growing area that's useful across a wide spectrum of business activity." Focus on the Future All these experts expect the entrepreneurial spirit to contin- ue to shape both the world of education and the world of business. "I think the slope of the curve of growth in entre- preneurship will be less steep than we saw in the mid to late '90s, but we're prepared for that to happen," says Spinelli. "The old way of teaching an entrepreneur class—of taking you from idea to harvest and sending you off into the world to make your fortune—is going to change to courses with significantly more depth, because the students themselves are coming in with more knowledge." He adds, "When I first came here, if I used the term IPO sive that it no longer will be singled out and taught as a stand- alone concept. "Entrepreneurship is not a course or a business entity—it's a way of thinking," she says. "It should become so much a part of how we deliver business education that every- body will be exposed to entrepreneurial ways to approach business. It has to be integral to the other mechanics of busi- ness, such as finance, accounting, marketing, and operations." She also encourages directors of entrepreneurial programs to keep up with what's happening in the business world. "Stay on the leading edge of program offerings. Watch what's happening to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ventures in the real world. At Colorado, the students are a great source of information, because our MBAs must have three to five years of work experience before they apply. I also have a terrific advisory board made up of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and we meet quite regularly. They're eager to make sure we get the current spin on things." That spin may be rotating faster every year as the business to a class of first-year MBAs, they'd ask me what I was talking about. Now, if I say 'IPO' to a group of high school seniors climate continues to speed up and change. As Internet mar- keting becomes even more refined and local business owners learn to sell on a global scale, the incentives and paybacks for founding a new business become even more irresistible for would-be entrepreneurs. Business schools can help prepare them for life on their own—armed with all the tools they need to make that new venture a success. ■ z BizEd MAY/JUNE 2002 25