Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program
Introduction
I am a student at WWU, and today I would like to talk about why Entrepreneurship and Innovation is the best minor you could pursue at Western. The relevancy of driving innovative change in all of the industries of today’s world is always increasing and thus, has never been higher. The entrepreneurial mindset broadly envelopes bringing about changes to the existent system in a capitalist society through innovation in experience and efficiency. With incredibly pressing issues facing humanity today including the climate crisis, widespread systematic oppression, and incredible disparity in resource availability, there is a great deal of change required across the wide landscape of humans and industry if positive momentum is to be gathered toward a future the young people of today can be proud to have precipitated.
I believe that the entrepreneurial mindset and related skillset taught through WWU Entrepreneurship and Innovation are among the most important tools we can wield in the pursuit of change, as they directly enable individuals to dream big, see room for improvement in the world, organize teams effectively, and understand a process for enacting this change in the world or community around them, across every industry and space.
The Program
So, how does that figure? Where is the connection between the Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor and the ability to actively change the world around you? I will outline the program’s offering as I have experienced it and will highlight the particularly remarkable combination of activating and unlocking the individual’s potential for greatness in tandem with a cultivation of strong teamwork and collaboration skills in the context of a community oriented learning path, which is supported by tried and tested frameworks known to be successful among even the most accomplished thinkers and creators in the world today.
Cultivating Community
First and foremost, I want to highlight the incredibly immersive community offered by this program. Students and faculty alike are encouraged to actively support each other in projects both in and out of the classroom, this culture of support and cascading leadership from the higher levels of the minor all the way down to brand new first-quarter students allow for students to progress in their learning and ability at a maximum pace. I have not experienced a program, or more appropriately a community in which such a large percentage of the participants are as actively involved in supporting and cultivating success for their peers as they are for themselves, it is a powerful dynamic which allows students to pursue passions and projects that they wish to bring to reality, but also are reminded of and supported by their community each step of the way. This is a crucial distinction to be made for the budding entrepreneurs of today (in comparison to the scrappy, get-rich-or-die businessmen caricature for which the “entrepreneur” may embody in some places today), this emphasis on community involvement and cultivation keeps students engaged with humanity and their communities through the continued addressing of “Wicked Problems” (as they are referred to in the curriculum) that truly drive each individual to want to make a difference in their community and world. This culture of belonging requests solidarity, enables individual creativity, and encourages true social entrepreneurship in all ventures, each person must choose to be there for something more than the now dated idea of chasing a buck, but to instead always ask “What problem am I solving here?”.
Compelling Curriculum
Even more central to the heart of this program than the incredible community that surrounds it is the curriculum material that fuels student growth in WWU Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Through a flexible and ever-expanding list of frameworks for students to apply to every step of the entrepreneurial process, this minor offers individuals an opportunity to adopt efficient, proven, and repeatable processes for identifying opportunity, serving solutions, and truly solving problems in any space. Using a blend of industry standard frameworks like the BMC and VPC (business model and value proposition canvases respectively) as well as homegrown solutions geared specifically toward educating students in this minor. These compliment each other well as students seamlessly move through repeatable frameworks that help propel them through their creative and implementation cycles without bogging them down in steps and rules or robbing them of the autonomy to innovate. This curricular model is particularly compelling to me, and a sizable part of why I believe this is the best minor at Western, while the frameworks used are designed for the production of businesses and startups the foundational principles and values instilled through them are applicable to the launch of almost any project in our society, be it artistic, communal, political, educational, or even recreational there are examples in all areas of our individual lives in which the curriculum taught in WWU’s Entrepreneurship minor program can be applied to be more effective in following through on projects and goals we have already begun, as well as an empowering emphasis on developing the tools needed to create new and innovative goals and projects.
Unleashing Creativity
I will pick up in this section where I left off in the last, the WWU Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor’s focus on facilitating and enabling student creativity to solve real world problems. A naturally large part of the innovation process is rooted in creativity, one must be perceptive enough to notice inefficiencies, or problems in the world around them and must be creative and clever enough to then see a solution to this problem that might improve the problem. However, the next step and one which is ever-increasing in importance and is considered a prerequisite for undertaking an entrepreneurial journey is identifying opportunities in this space, essentially validating the observation that a solution one has envisioned can be enacted in a specific way. While scientific in root, this practice of gathering evidence and validating ideas is truly some of the most creative work I have ever had the opportunity to pursue and to observe, this minor promotes the marriage of forming and testing hypotheses, finding just right path to take, alongside the artful creativity associated with appealing to and providing value to humans, providing an offering that surprises and delights those who encounter it. In short, this minor looks to start from an inward perspective of how students perceive their own values and passions and then looks to use these as fuel to be consistently creative in formulating hypotheses and looking to serve positively disruptive innovation to the world.
Looking Forward
For current and prospective Western Washington University students there has likely not yet been a time in our lives with as much grand uncertainty as we face now, entrepreneurship is definitively the practice of turning visionary solutions to problems into reality, under uncertain circumstances. Here at WWU Entrepreneurship and Innovation the program is devoted to turning the students of today into the changemakers of tomorrow. I wholeheartedly believe that there is no skill set more timely than that of the Innovator. Consider enrolling with us, either in a 1-Credit offering to get some insight into the sort of opportunities communally and educationally available through our program. Or even better join the minor, and get plugged in! Hope to see you soon.