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129th NEASC Annual Meeting and ConferenceDecember 10, 2014

Boston, MA

Entrepreneurial Thinking:Its Role and Impact in Different

Educational Settings

Alfred J Nanni, Jr (Fred)Provost

Professor of Management Accounting

Babson College

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Some Background

1974 Babson College “declares” entrepreneurship can be taught.

1977 Babson establishes the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs.

1978 First Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Babson College is established.

1979 Undergraduate program establishes the first entrepreneurship major.

1980 The first endowed entrepreneurship professorship is established.

1981 Annual Babson Entrepreneurship Research Conference is established.

1994 First US News specialty ranking in Entrepreneurship is named – Babson is #1.

The Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship. Dedicated in 1998.

Summer Venture Showcase, 2014

Babson’s Mission Drives 3 Goals:

• Be the preeminent institution in the world for Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® .

• Expand the notion of entrepreneurship to embrace and celebrate Entrepreneurs of All Kinds™.

• Put the power of entrepreneurship as a force for the creation of social, economic, environmentally responsible and sustainable value in as many hands in the world as we can.

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Easy, right?

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Difficulty #1: Selling “ET&A” across the faculty

• ET&A is not entrepreneurship• Where is ET&A in economics?

…in accounting?

…in philosophy?

ET&A is being creative and looking at things in new ways, not “seeing a problem as the absence of

pre-conceived solution.” It is not stopping at critique, but finding ways to improve.

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Difficulty #2:Meaningful measurement

Science tends to produce square pegs, but life provides not just round, but misshapen holes.

• We infused the curriculum with ET&A, including micro, mini, term-long and multi-term projects.

• Students have launched parallel co-curricular activities.

So, do we measure –

what we do?

what they do?

or how their approach to life changes?