The editor’s trip to CA was to promote the new book, Understanding Lean Startup, both in So. and No. California. Our first stop was the Price Entrepreneurship Center at UCLA, and to our surprise, there was the entrepreneurship quick study guide for sale in the main bookstore (buyer above). Located in the Anderson School of Management, the Price Center directed by Al Osborne has just opened a full accelerator on the lower floor of their beautiful facility. We were just as impressed by the Greif Center for Entrepreneurship in the Marshall School of Business at USC. It is well endowed, has 27 faculty instructors, and has graduated some notable entrepreneurs -Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com), Chris DeWolfe (MySpace.com), and Lloyd Greif (investment banker, its namesake). Note white horse…
By far our most memorable visit was to an entrepreneurship class taught by Mike Chrimshaw at Cal State Dominquez Hills in Carson/Watts. This college was moved to Carson after the Watts riots in the 1960s to promote economic development, and promote it does! He invited me to guest lecture, and to my astonishment each student in the room wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’ve never had 100% before. Most minorities, they were amazing kids who knew where they were going, and Mike a special instructor with over 30 years experience in the technology industry who can relate to the students like no other.
Besides these institutions we also visited 3 community colleges, Cal Tech, and made our way to No. CA. There we found great programs at USF, the University of San Francisco, and SF State in their downtown facility, which has been nationally recognized. Our week in Silicon Valley was to reach out to smaller schools missed last year, among them Cogswell Polytechnical, Silicon Valley University, and several community colleges (Mission. West Valley, and Monterey Peninsula).
Cogswell combines the disciplines of technology and entrepreneurship so graduates can solve problems and create new technology for society. Silicon Valley University is a non-profit whose faculty are experts from the valley providing undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science. I like to think our visit with their dean added entrepreneurship to their curriculum.
Finally, we ended our trip at the annual NACCE, National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, conference in Sacramento. Well attended and sponsored, there were breakout sessions on everything from running an incubator to essential proof in curriculums. The main stage presented workforce development, student success, economic trends, and two panel discussions -college presidents with their EIRs, entrepreneurs-in-residence, and an excellent dialogue on lean startup comparing the Blank lean launch to Aulet’s disciplined entrepreneurship. Guests for the latter included David Charron of UC Berkeley and Renee Rock of Cal Lutheran University, both experts in their fields. All and all it was a very productive trip that distributed over 30 copies of the new Understanding Lean Startup book. The book is available on this blog under “Publications”.
