Priorities:University of Nevada Reno Student Priorities

Overview

The University of Nevada has a strong suite of entrepreneurial resources and programs dedicated to giving entrepreneurs and hopeful entrepreneurs the tools they need to flesh out their ideas and shore up their business acumen. Many of these resources are presented in the context of the Sontag Entrepreneurship Competition, a $50,000 annual business plan contest, but they are given with the subtext that even unsuccessful bids for the Sontag can be developed into sustainable businesses after the competition’s end. Nevada also maintains an active Technology Transfer Office with a proven track record of vetting viable research projects and successfully developing plans to commercialize them. Both of the two winners so far in the Sontag were TTO spin-out projects.

Academically, Nevada has a solid and growing entrepreneurship program. Four entrepreneurship classes are offered by the University as either high-level undergraduate or graduate courses. Together, they serve as requirements for an entrepreneurship minor, usually to complement a business degree, or as a specialization in the University’s MBA. The Department maintains two Endowed Chairs in Entrepreneurship, as well as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

The extracurricular environment for entrepreneurship is also active. The UNR Entrepreneurship Club holds guest speaker sessions and organizes events—including Pack Pitch, a miniature business plan and pitch competition. Other student organizations like Enactus and various engineering groups also maintain active chapters on campus.

However, the primary shortcoming of Nevada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is that it is localized. Very little interest in innovation and entrepreneurship exists beyond the entrepreneurship community; even though there is interest, it hasn’t metastasized to the campus at large. Dan Langford of the University’s Technology Transfer Office agreed, mentioning that the campus’s community of entrepreneurially inclined business students and the campus’s research community very rarely overlap. Therefore, the first step in any effort to transform the University of Nevada should not be to add a resource to the existing supply for entrepreneurs; instead, it should be to fuel cultural demand.

Creating a culture of entrepreneurship, though, is no easy task: it requires a broad-based appeal to the nascent ambitions of students campus-wide. The best way to do this would be to drum up exposure for successful startups at Nevada and in Reno, as direct proof that students can be directly responsible for innovative shifts. More than enough successful companies exist at Reno, Tahoe, and Truckee to make this possible; for further reaching, Silicon Valley and Las Vegas are also nearby.

The second strategy in setting a cultural precedent for entrepreneurship is to ensure that the people who do get involved are given every resource to actually commit to their ventures. The students who enter business plan competitions today are too easily dispelled from taking their projects to market, either by attractive job prospects or by inability to take the final steps toward incorporation. Therefore, bodies that help bridge the gap between academic exercise and functioning company—functioning incubators, student venture funds, legal assistance groups—could result in more startups and in more student examples.

Link to Prezi overview of campus ecosystem:

Calling all students

Informational Session (come hear plans, offer feedback and help expand opportunities for all students)

• Where: [Google Hangout On Air <a href="<a href="http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/onair.html">http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/onair.html</a>">[1]</a> or other existing meeting of students interested in I&E in Engineering.]
• When: [Date, Time]
• RSVP: [your email address, google form, eventbrite or meetup link]

Strategy #1: ________

Following are an array of strategies that will fully address Gap #1 over a 2-3 year period:

Tactic #1: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Tactic #2: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Tactic #3: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Strategy #2: ________

Following are an array of strategies that will fully address Gap #2 over a 2-3 year period:

Tactic #1: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Tactic #2: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader:: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]

Tactic #3: [Name of tactic]

• Description [250 words on why this strategy will solve this gap on your campus]
• Team Leader: [Either your name, TBD or create a title assigned to the person who volunteers]
• Milestones: [A set of bullets that characterize the work that would likely need to be executed, along with mm/yy]