By Nancy Dahlberg / [email protected]
South Florida’s colleges and universities have made the leap into experiential entrepreneurship education, with training and programs that go beyond the classroom, beyond the business plan contests, beyond the E-clubs. Yes, there are still clubs and contests, and entrepreneurship classes have multiplied too, but on today’s campuses, startups, growing small businesses and entrepreneur wannabes can even base their companies on campus, drawing support from fellow entrepreneurs, university resources and a South Florida mentorship community at large.
Some of these programs are solely for students and some are open to the non-student community, but all have this in common: It’s real-life entrepreneurship with a support system close at hand, and the end game is startup or scale-up development. They are part of a larger effort underway to develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem in South Florida.
Universities typically play a critical role in an ecosystem, attacting young people to an area and turning out talent, bringing thought leadership to a community and being hubs for research and collaborations that spawn companies. They can serve as anchor institutions; Stanford and MIT are often credited for sparking much of the entrepreneurial success in their areas of the country. In recent years, as South Florida’s effort to build an ecosystem got underway, some community leaders have questioned whether the region’s colleges and universities were too siloed and could be contributing more.
That may be changing.
South Florida universities are developing campus hubs for entrepreneurship, as interest in all things startup increases and economic realities make entrepreneurial skills a 21st century necessity. In addition to entrepreneurship courses in their colleges, Miami Dade College and Florida International University have started major interdisciplinary initiatives that help entrepreneurs from the idea-on-a-napkin stage to funding and scaling their businesses.