Can academic institutions help build entrepreneurs?

I picked up this video from Guy Kawasaki’s blog. This is how he describes it:

This is a video of the winner of Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Week innovation tournament. The challenge for the tournament was to use an everyday object to create as much value as possible. The “RubberBandTogether” team’s goal is to sell the ball and donate the proceeds to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Cost? $1/band or $3,056.

Its fascinating to see students in the team starting something from scratch, working together and actually implementing the idea. Although these experiences are usually beyond the realm of classroom learning, academic institutions can play an important role in developing entrepreneurs, through events like the Stanford Entrepreneurship Week. The key with such initiatives is to get students to interact with the ‘real world’.

Of course, we have covered Genesis, India’s premier Social Entrepreneurship competition conducted by IIT Madras. I’m sure there are a lot more we have missed. Drop us a word in the comments and we will feature efforts within your campus to encourage entrepreneurship.