BUILDing Community Based Entrepreneurship

Examining a Community-Centered Approach to Entrepreneurship Education and Providing a Blueprint for Future Programs by UConn

Presented By Jennifer Mathieu, Rory McGloin, Michaela Hartl, and Alycia Chrosniak

• • Build partnerships with existing companies in the ecosystem
  • Built an insure-tech incubator to connect large insurance companies with startups
  • Internships are one part of it
  • Marketing and recruiting students 
    • Open to undergrad and grad students across all campuses and majors
    • Started ambiguously to learn about Hartford, identify problems,
    • Started with the storytelling of Hartford – glory days – historic buildings
    • Storytelling of businesses and new opportunities

• IDEA: Social media storytelling for companies recruiting interns

• IDEA: Market industries with related startups available for students

• • Program
    • Design a course that intersects students + community of Hartford
    • Different backgrounds means a lack of a shared vernacular
    • Iterative design
    • Let the students write their own course by telling us what they think they want to do, and we will guide you on that path
  • What’s unique about the program?
    • Enter/exit interviews gathered data and tangible insights

• IDEA: questions for end-of-program survey

• • What did you expect to learn?

• • What did you actually learn?

• • What would have been helpful to have in the course?

• Collaborative approach to building what the program looks like with key stakeholders, instructional team
• Largest challenge
  • Faculty and Curriculum
  • How do we get the credits out and assess this amazing course?
  • Needs a deliverable
  • How do you grade a student’s ability to go out into the community and listen?
  • Go out in the community to listen to business owners
  • Overinflate those final projects
  • Curriculum design – need to assess – figure out where we are going
  • How do we measure some of these things?
• Entrepreneurial Mindset Assessment
  • Before and after the course
  • Makes their growth mandatory
• Key takeaways?
  • Interdisciplinary is key
  • Core of what we do is a foundational opportunity for education and entrepreneurship
  • We teach people the skills and mindset of an entrepreneur
  • Hope it translates into whatever their career will be
• City takeaways?
  • Young people are invested in the city
• Book – Startup Communities by Brad Feld
  • Great part of the curriculum
  • Describes all the stakeholders involved
  • Universities cannot be the #1 driver of an entrepreneurial ecosystem
  • It is the entrepreneurs and business builders who drive it
  • Leverage where the university sits in the ecosystem
  • Don’t try to come in and rescue
    • Not “how can I help you?
    • Come in and listen empathetically
    • Ask what do your students do after listening empathetically
• Deliverables
  • First cohort of UConn students did not represent the community of Hartford
  • Talk early on about solutions or strategies that do NOT utilize university resources
• How or where should other universities begin implementing this type of program?
  • Here to connect your university in to your ecosystem
  • Core elements
    • What do we teach our entrepreneurs?
      • Customer discovery to go out and ask questions
      • Be critical of what you are hearing
      • Go out and understand where best the need is and what challenges are being faced
    • Starting assessment
      • Strengths
      • Weaknesses
      • Opportunities
      • Threats
      • In the ecosystem
      • Are there other organizations that are doing work looking at the themes?
  • You will need allies and advocates from multiple perspectives
    • Our relationship with the mayor of Hartford
      • Policymakers in the state
      • Federal money like COVID-related relief
      • How can we get a piece of that $50M to support the program?
    • Can I get an officer to be dedicated to this mission?
    • Donors
  • Students reported that it would be integral to work with corporate sponsorship
    • Manufacturing and insurance ecosystem
    • How do we work with Raytheon and other huge companies?
    • Gap between large and small businesses
• Q&A
• Corporate partners’ engagement?
  • Mentorship?
  • Economic development
• How do we get entrepreneurship spread to other professors?
  • That’s the core of all our problems…silos in our organizations
• Students went to small businesses and were much more welcomed by business owners, who became teachers to pass along knowledge to students
  • Use students as ambassadors in the community
  • Students identified barber shop needs social media marketing