What is it with entrepreneurship? Is this just another vacuous fad, the latest gust of wind to fill the Business Week spinnaker? I don’t think so. In fact, I think business is only half of what it’s about.
The other half is, I believe, about personal freedom. It is about your choice as an individual to exercise the power of free will, to take risks, and to succeed.
"What free will? Course assignments, interviews, exams, and class projects clutter my schedule like software bugs in Redmond. After graduation, there are corporate jobs and corporate ladders. What’s a budding entrepreneur to do?"
In my opinion, the first step is to realize that you are the CEO of your life. You already have about two decades of experience as the chairman and lead entrepreneur of "You.com." For twenty years, you have managed investments of time and energy in numerous separate ventures designed to maximize short- and long-term yields as measured in personal, family, and community fulfillment. As the head of your own corporate entity, you have balanced academic, athletic, social, and extracurricular activities as separate investments in your portfolio. How do you increase your odds of success? A Wall Street analyst would recommend that you "diversify your risk." Translation: 1) Combine high-yield growth opportunities with those sure-fire methods that put bacon on the table, and 2) Accept that your investments are experiments. The more experiments that you run, the more likely that some of them will succeed. Go on! Ask him or her to dance!
The next step is to realize and take advantage of what RPI can offer budding entrepreneurs. There are at least three structural features of RPI that make it unique in its entrepreneurial potential.
First, RPI is the right place to join or to start a club. (See the September 29, 2000 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.) It could be our students, perhaps it’s the supportiveness of the student Union, or maybe it is the intensity of the classroom experience. Whatever it is, there is something about RPI that really motivates us students to get out of our classrooms and into our clubs. Clubs are where people meet each other and learn to work together. Clubs are the stamping grounds for entrepreneurial teamwork.
Second, RPI is big on corporate recruiting. It is no hidden irony that the visibility and pervasiveness of the corporate recruiting machine generates an entrepreneurial backlash. The promise of safe, predictable careers surrounded by sound-sucking beige cubicle walls act for some people as the white-collar equivalent of smokestack shadows on the high school playground: the big corporations are here, they want you, and they guarantee you will never go hungry. But you might just die of boredom at an early age.
Third, RPI is exceptional in its gold mine of commercializable technology. We have a "motherload" of commercializable technology just sitting on the shelves of our faculty laboratories, collecting dust. At the same time, we have a conspicuous absence of professional prospectors that schools like MIT and Columbia have, whose careers are devoted to finding real world applications for this university technology. The discrepancy between the large future value of our technology reservoir and the present lack of professional resources to explore it means that we, the students, have a fantastic opportunity to play a pivotal role. Students who work in the labs across campus are the best prospectors of the technology motherload on this campus. We have an intimate knowledge of the background science, the potential applications, and the people involved. RPI students are therefore in a unique position to find, develop, and take part in the rewards of commercializing the technology here on campus.
The point? RPI is a terrific place to be an entrepreneur. Take some risks!
Matt Freshman
BMED GRAD
