There is a movement afoot to standardize entrepreneurship education. While there are some benefits to setting standards and even to accreditation, I hope that the traditional academics can keep their hands off entrepreneurship education for at least a while longer.
Certainly part of what has made entrepreneurship education flourish has been the creative juices that flow in many of its pioneers. We seem to be hung-up on finding legitimacy with our peers in the academy, so we fret about developing a theory base. The truth is, business education itself is in its infancy. We have only been teaching business education since the 1950’s (Authors note: I believe that anything developed within my life time should be considered relatively new, or even down right modern. It may be denial, but that is my premise and I’m sticking to it!).
When I compare my own business education which began about thirty years ago to today, much has changed. Why? Some is from new knowledge, but much of it is because we live in a changing world. Business operates within a complex context. Governmental policy can drastically change major parts of what we once knew to be true. The Finance and Banking text I studied from is no longer even close to today’s understanding. Deregulation of banking and financial services transformed this sector beyond recognition from what we learned in my MBA program in the late 1970’s. Social trends have had a tremendous impact. My wife was part of the first major wave of women going into the traditionally male work world. Human Resources texts are now full of discussion on sexual harassment and gender bias in the workplace. Amazing new theories have fundamentally changed the fields of finance and economics. And entrepreneurship? It wasn’t even a word that we learned. Now it is everywhere in business curricula.
So relax! Entrepreneurship is a fundamentally part of our current economic transformation. Let the creativity that is so much a part of entrepreneurship do its work. Let the market judge what programs and what knowledge work for entrepreneurs. Let us continue to play with the concepts and tools and how to teach them. I continually change my courses, and advocate that we reinvent our whole curriculum every few years. Just as entrepreneurs find that their businesses look very little like they envisioned in their business plans, I imagine that how we teach entrepreneurship will continue to evolve and improve. After all, entrepreneurship education is really still in its start-up phase and the world around us is in a period of amazing change. Give it time.

Carnival of the Capitalists is up and running for this week. Check it out at Outsourcing Weblog.

Sorry for being off-line for a couple of days. We upgraded our server and software and it took a little longer than planned…

I continue to be amazed at the trend toward more and more new business formation. Even as the economy picks up, we see experienced executives moving into the entrepreneurial ranks, as seen in this post by Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends. The biggest challenge these executives face is to understand that they are not forming a small, “big business”.
Most of these folks find that to survive in the entrepreneurial realm they must unlearn many things they know from their big business experiences, and more importantly develop many new habits. I had an entrepreneur in my MBA class last night who stressed what a challenge this can be. He began his career moving up the ranks of a large corporation. Then he caught the bug, and decided to strike out on his own.
One day, he needed some Post-it notes, and was ready to tell someone to get them for him. That’s how it worked in his old job, after all. But, wait! There was no one but he and his partner. So, he did what every entrepreneur does: he got in his car and drove down to Office Depot. He also found that he began to write notes on the back of used paper, rather than pull out a clean sheet of letter head as he did when in a big company. He started to stay in Microtels and fly Southwest, rather than stay in the best hotels and fly first class.
Another challenge is that some big business converts find that raising money can be relatively easy. This actually can be a mistake if it is too easy. Too much money is almost as bad as not enough. These new entrepreneurs find it easy to spend this “extra” money on overhead and “lifestyle” expenses. This can burden on a young business by creating too much fixed overhead, which will eventually catch-up with these entrepreneurs. The business cannot grow large enough, quickly enough to cover these fixed expenses. And when they do realize the problem they created, it is often already too late for their business to recover.
But many do make the transition and are now filling the ranks of this growing army.

There is a nice summary of key start-up issues and concerns at Forbes.com.
Full disclosure: OK, so they quoted me in this article. But, its a good one anyway…..

I visited an interesting weblog this morning called the [non]billable hour. It is written by an attorney named Matt Homann who is trying to change the practice of law–for the good–as he puts it, “one lawyer at a time”. An interesting site for entrepreneurs, as well.
It took me a few tries to find an attorney for our business who really understood entrepreneurs, how we work, and how we need them to work. Don’t give up if you are trying to find a new attorney.
Here are some tips on choosing and working with an attorney that I talk about with entrepreneurs that is based on a great book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law by Constance E. Bagley, Craig E. Dauchy:
Choosing an Attorney
1. Understand the advantages and disadvantages of large vs. small firms. Large firms have specialized expertise that can become critical as you grow. Small firms can offer a more personal touch and can be more efficient. Most entrepreneurs need something in between. Understand your needs (e.g., intellectual property, environmental law, employment law, etc.) and make sure they have an expert that can address your needs as these issues arise.
2. Get at least three referrals from people you trust. Your best source is other entrepreneurs.
3. Interview each firm carefully. Think about things such as: personality (you may need to spend a lot of time with these folks during stressful times in your life), how compatible you think the working relationship would be with these folks, their use of technology to make things more efficient (and cheaper) for you as a client, the timeliness in returning phone calls (they will never be more responsive than when they are trying to get your business–so if they are slow now….), knowledge of your industry (not essential, but helpful), do they add networking potential to sources of funding or new business, and finally find out how much they cost and how sensitive they are to your limited budget (be honest and direct–if they are defensive about their rates, run for the hills!).
Working With an Attorney Effectively
1. Talk openly about fee structure for any project and be honest about your budget. Their are more than one way for them to bill, and they should be willing to work with you, especially if you are a newer venture. If not, go to the list above and find a new attorney. Some attorneys will reduce the fees for working with a promising entrepreneur with the hope that as you grow, they will reap the benefits of more business when you can better afford to pay for it. Ask about this!!
2. Your attorney should be willing to let you preparing your own drafts on documents. This can save a lot of money and will result in documents that better reflect your business and your strategies.
3. Organize your meetings with your attorney. Batch issues so you have fewer, more efficient meetings that can cover several issues at once.
4. Be proactive. If you think you might need to talk to your attorney, you probably do. They should let you send a quick e-mail to see if they really need to talk with you about an issue as a regular practice.
5. If you have questions about your bill from them, ask them about it! If they get defensive, you may want to start shopping for a new attorney.
By the way, make sure to get your lawyers to visit Matt’s site. Then talk with them about it–OFF THE CLOCK!

Rob at BusinessPundit suggested a post at The Occupational Adventure about failure. It is worth a look. Failure, or the fear of failure, is what has kept many a potential entrepreneur on the sidelines. Failure is something we all have learned from along the way if we let ourselves take some risks. It reminds me of the first time I really got tackled hard in Junior High football. I was really afraid of how it would feel, and although it really did hurt (the guy was the star line backer of the eighth grade team), I learned from it (stay away from his side the rest of the game and go out for cross country next fall).
We can all learn from our own failures. That is an important part of entrepreneurial learning. We can also learn from the failures and mistakes of others (I picked that up and a young age being the youngest of four boys–thanks for all the lessons on what not to do Tom, Scot and Steve). Some of my best lectures center around mistakes and failures I had in business and how I tried to learn from them going forward.

Anita over at Small Business Trends posted a summary of a survey conducted by Yahoo Small Business. It looks like technology is on small business people’s minds these days. Although the survey is sponsored by Yahoo, it was conducted by Harris. It still could be slanted by Yahoo’s involvement, but is interesting even with this possible bias.
“In a survey of over 1,000 small business owners, the following activities were listed as the most beneficial to the growth of their company, in order of importance:
Having or establishing an online presence (35%)
Having or obtaining dedicated business email (30%)
Increasing online advertising (30%)
Hiring more employees (19%)”
Technology can certainly level the playing field a bit, and can create opportunities that could not exist without its support. However, just as I used to tell small businesses that not all of them needed to be in the Yellow Pages (most usually thought they did), not all businesses today need to have a web presence.
Think like your customer.
If your customers look for your type of business in the Yellow Pages then be there with your advertising (restaurants still get much of their business from this source of information). If they look for your type of business on the web, then that is where you should be.
This is a transition time, however. Many businesses are finding that they have to cover multiple media for their message as customers are not all using the same source for product/service information. Some customers within the same target market are more technologically inclined while others still are not.
In this case, think like your customers.
NOTE: If you found the relatively low priority for hiring interesting, as I did, make sure to read my post from yesterday.

In a land far, far away, over the sea….Carnival of the Capitalists is waiting for you.