It’s been about six months since Professor Barb Fails sent out an e-mail inviting Michigan State University (MSU) faculty members to come together to discuss the ins and outs of starting a business. Since then, members have met monthly, with brown bag lunches in tow, at the Student Union and MSU's Snyder Hall.
But on Oct. 15, about a quarter of the people on her list of 120 will gather off-campus at the East Lansing Technology and Innovation Center (TIC).
“It will be way more fun there,” says Fails, associate director of the MSU Land Policy Institute’s Entrepreneurial Communities program.
The TIC is filled with hard charging start up companies, and locating the meeting there will demonstrate that entrepreneurship is tangible; it can be touched, and its effects spread way beyond the campus.
While Fails is quick to note that the faculty group is still finding its mission, and she will not be the determiner of how it will function, she personally believes it is the extended networks and the cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences that will forge a community-wide entrepreneurial mindset.
“This will be how we will become a prosperous Michigan,” she says.
All the university's new groups forming to promote business start-ups are open to one another. For example, the faculty group is invited to meet with the Innovation Club for Entrepreneurs (ICE), and vice-versa.
ICE had its fist meeting last week. It focuses on college and graduate students from throughout the community, including Lansing Community College (LCC), and aims to help them start businesses.
“For too long we’ve been too parochial,” Fails says, suggesting it’s time to pull people together from across different sectors. “You put people with different skill sets in the same room and watch the sparks fly,” she says.
Source: Barbara Fails, Land Policy Institute
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
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