Changing Mindsets in a County of Contrasts
February 25, 2022
If you look at a map of distressed communities within the U.S., the southern and eastern states are overrepresented. If you zoom in on Appalachia and then North Carolina, you’ll find Robeson County, the state’s most-distressed county in 2021. But, if you were to look at Robeson County in another way—as an area full of rich culture and interesting individuals—it would place near the top of the list. For example, U.S. News ranks it as…
Read more
How the City of Albuquerque Grows Entrepreneurial Thinking From the Inside Out
January 25, 2022
Many cities have worked to attract entrepreneurs over the past decade. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is among them—but in an innovative twist, the fast-growing Southwestern city also worked to foster an entrepreneurial mindset from the inside out. City leaders aren’t looking for municipal employees to start their own businesses. Instead, they’re following the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative’s definition of entrepreneurship as the self-director pursuit of opportunities to create value for others. Here’s the story of how…
Read more
College Success Reimagined: A Unique Approach in Wyoming
January 12, 2022
First-year college students often take some version of a success course designed to ease their transition into campus experiences. At Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the freshman success course used to be a series of basic how-to lessons on things like using the library. But when the college decided to move to a guided pathways model, it seized the opportunity for a revolutionary update to the one class that nearly all incoming…
Read more
Applying an Entrepreneurial Mindset to a Tough Economic Reality
December 6, 2021
Sometimes the students in Assistant Professor James Myers’ Introduction to Entrepreneurship course balk when he assigns them to interview entrepreneurial thinkers in their lives. “Students say, ‘I’m running out of people to talk to!’” said Myers, an Assistant Professor in the business department at Pasco-Hernando State College in west-central Florida. He replies that they haven’t exhausted the supply—they’re just looking in the wrong places. “You have to go outside your immediate social circle,” he…
Read more
Go Before You Know: The Power of Learning Through Doing
February 18, 2021
The stories behind many large, established businesses—from Waste Management to Walmart—often start the same way. A young person, motivated by a good idea, pursues small, uncertain niche opportunities. They do so without much capital, research, industry experience, or contacts. How does this happen? How does an inexperienced, cash-strapped entrepreneur manage to transform an unrecognizable idea into a sustainable success? Hint: It isn’t a propensity for taking risks. Origins and Evolutions of New Business Researcher…
Read more