Students will race to success this weekend with the beginning of the first ever entrepreneurship week, in St. Louis and throughout the nation.
The event will kick off with an “Amazing Race” style competition in which teams of two will go throughout the St. Louis area testing their entrepreneurial skills, beginning tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. This event is part of the full week of programs planned for entrepreneurship week.
“The race for entrepreneurship is more of a fun, out of the box kind of opportunity for people to learn about entrepreneurship in St. Louis and in general,” said Jill Baker, the economic opportunity collaboration coordinator for the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (SCES).
The focus of the programs is to get students who may not be thinking about entrepreneurship interested and involved through various activities and workshops during the week. Other Universities throughout St. Louis are also participating in the event, as well as the St. Louis business community.
We’ve come together as a group of college and university educators. We are putting this on not only at Washington University, but connecting with different programs such as the resource fair and with other colleges and universities in the area,” said Baker. “As a group, we thought it would be a really nice way to share one program and help people experience resources in St. Louis.”
Kenneth Harrington, the director of SCES, agreed.
“It’s such a mix of all the different universities in town, Innovate St. Louis, and a combination of education, fun, faculty, students, community…it’s just a very collaborative coming together,” said Kenneth Harrington, director of SCES. “That’s what amazes me. We’re having faculty meetings, and having student meetings, and students are doing meetings, and other universities are doing things with us. It’s what makes innovation begin to blossom. I’m really excited.”
One of the key events pushing this focus is the Student Entrepreneurship Workshop next Tuesday, in which students will be exposed to a wide variety of information regarding entrepreneurship, as well as attend a panel of University alumni from the business world.
“A lot of seniors are going through exam projects [in the school of architecture]..a number of students have ideas that they want to take to commercialization, the [workshops] would be a good place to help them,” said senior Teddy Purnomo, who helped bring many of the activities to the University. “You don’t want to burn the idea too fast by disclosing too many things or not researching the right thing.”
Baker also noted that of all the events, the series of workshops is likely to provide a very helpful range of information for students who may not know much about entrepreneurial interests.
“It’s a really nice opportunity for students who think they might be interested in entrepreneurship. It provides a really nice opportunity to explore options and explore their interests,” said Baker.
The panel afterwards will feature business people both in entrepreneurial and more traditional positions, as well as people who started their own businesses then went to a larger firm, and vice versa.
“[It will give] different perspectives on people working in an entrepreneurial environment versus an existing salaried position,” said Baker.
As for what is in store for the future, Baker and Purnomo expect to see even more changes.
“[Entrepreneurship week] will emphasize the importance of entrepreneurship in the sense that people do care about it, and it is going to be something significant, and hopefully more will consider being involved with it,” said Purnomo. “Hopefully [entrepreneurial opportunity] will build itself to the point where it will be the biggest thing in a student’s mind when looking at colleges.”