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Successful
entrepreneurship can mean many different things: creating
new ventures and products; creating shareholder value;
demonstrating social responsibility in business; and giving
back to support the community that enables one's own success.
As evidenced by the activities chronicled in this issue
of Innovation, the Lester Center has been busy this spring
helping to bring to the campus experience elements of
all of these. Three student competitions this spring
provided hands-on experience in creating and investing
in new ventures. The U.C. Berkeley
Business Plan Competition brought together teams
of entrepreneurial engineers, scientists and business
students to design new ventures to commercialize exciting
new technologies. The winner of the competition, Proton
Power, exemplified this wonderful |
cross functional collaboration. The Global
Social Venture Competition focused on entrepreneurial ventures
that create substantial social value as a core mission. And
new this year, the U.C. Berkeley Venture
Capital Investment Competition gave students a taste of
the challenges of making investment decisions and helping entrepreneur's
launch their ventures.
Spring is also the season for recognizing accomplishment.
Certainly graduation is the touchstone, and, in addition,
the Lester Center was able to recognize a number of individual
students through various grants and awards, but most important
was the awarding of the Lester Center's Lifetime
Achievement award to Sandy Robertson. Sandy's career of
entrepreneurial accomplishment and support for his community
serves as an exemplar for young aspiring entrepreneurs. One
part of teaching is identifying good role models. With Sandy
Robertson, as with all the previous Lifetime Achievement recipients,
this has certainly been accomplished.
This spring we also embarked on a significant
new academic research initiative. Thanks to the support
of the Kauffman Foundation, the Lester Center will be engaging
campus-wide with some of the finest social scientists at the
University to examine how entrepreneurship factors into their
fields of expertise. This exploration will yield new learnings
and insights that will position Berkeley as a thought leader
on public policy to support entrepreneurship.
Truly, it has been a busy and productive spring. We have provided
hands-on experiences, recognized success and held it up to
the light for others to emulate, and lastly, we have embarked
on a research effort to bring the best faculty minds at U.C.
Berkeley to bear on entrepreneurship. Thank you to everyone
who has made this endeavor possible.
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