New MBA Course on Technology Entrepreneurship

By now you have no doubt heard any number of prominent Big Apple business leaders boasting about how the city has recently become a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity, drawing both top technology talent and venture capital investment in record numbers.

According to key players in New York's VC investment community, New York's rejuvenated technology startup ecosystem is now on a sustainable track because of some key changes that have occurred since the demise of the dotcom industry at the end of the 90s.  Now there are many more serial entrepreneurs around who know how to build companies quickly and are willing to invest their time and capital to help aspiring technology entrepreneurs succeed.  Concurrently, many of the top engineering and technology savvy graduates of New York –based schools are choosing to stay in the New York area instead of heading out west to Silicon Valley. The dwindling monetary rewards and prestige offered by the financial services sector have also led quant and tech savvy individuals to reconsider technology entrepreneurship opportunities in the New York area as viable alternatives to working in the big Wall Street firms.  

Finally, there's the change that has occurred in the attitudes of local universities toward the entrepreneurial impact of their research and education activities. Which brings us to the next topic you've probably heard about - Mayor Bloomberg's mega-initiative to turn New York into the world capital of technology startups. According to the Mayor, New York City's universities, while known for creating dazzling innovations, have significantly underperformed universities like Stanford, Cornell, and MIT when it comes to encouraging their scientific and engineering faculty and students to help create high impact companies.

So back in July of this year, Mayor Bloomberg announced the details of a request for "universities near and far" to submit proposals to build or expand a science and engineering campus in the city—a project he believes will shift the city's reliance away from Wall Street and toward a future based on technology.  According to the announcement, the winning proposal had to lay out a plan to develop research that would lead to the formation and expansion of companies in the city in industries with substantial growth potential. Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, maintains that the business community regards this project as the single most important action the city could take to ensure New York's continued leadership in the innovation economy.

Bloomberg's hypothesis is strongly supported by academic research. A study by sociologist Jonathan Cole of Columbia University estimates that high-technology activity, much of it stimulated by research institutions, accounts for 65% of the difference in economic growth among U.S. metropolitan regions, and that 80% of leading new industries may derive from university-based research.  Economist Paul Romer, who has recently joined the Stern School's faculty, has developed a body of scholarship referred to as New Growth Theory that uses elegant mathematical modeling to show that technological innovation ­­–driven in large part by market incentives– is at the heart of sustainable economic growth.

Speaking of hypotheses, here's one that is based on some unscientific sampling: There are quite a few entrepreneurially-minded Stern MBA students who are interested in contributing to the growth of New York's technology start-up ecosystem. Based on this hypothesis, the Management and Organizations department at the Stern School has taken the initiative to offer a new course on technology entrepreneurship that is designed to help students understand and deal successfully with issues typically faced by technology entrepreneurs, or managers who work in a technology-based startup. Relevant areas of technology innovation include, but are not limited to, computer hardware and software, communication, security, transportation, imaging, chemicals, optics, life sciences, and clean environment technology.

In contrast to other entrepreneurship courses offered in the MBA curriculum, this new course (MGMT-GB.3337.30), which will be offered on Monday eveningin the Spring semester, focuses on learning how to identify and evaluate a good technology commercialization opportunity, how to determine the best business approach for commercialization, and how to work with technology inventors and scientists to develop a workable business concept.  To that end, this course provides a unique opportunity for MBA students to work with the inventors of a new technology that solves an important problem in way that can potentially be commercialized into a profitable business. 

In addition to Professor Ari Ginsberg, course designer and instructor, Kurt Becker, Associate Provost for Research & Technology Initiatives and Professor of Applied Physics at Polytech will serve in a consulting role for this project. Students will be able to provide an assessment of the commercial viability of one of thousands of early stage technologies and inventions from over 150 universities and research institutes in the U.S. who have contributed detailed information to a centralized data base designed to provide access to individuals seeking innovation commercialization opportunities. Students will also have the opportunity to work on new technologies invented by faculty at local universities, such as NYU, Polytech, CUNY, and Stevens Institute who have agreed to be accessible.

For further information about the course, you can contact Professor Ari Ginsberg at aginsber@stern.nyu.edu.