ASU, we have a problem. We have a push that is unprecedented in the university system in the United States; a push to become what our University President has called “A New American University.” I personally believe this to be an extremely important quest, one which is crucial to promoting the growth and development of one of the nation’s largest institutions. Part of this ambition lies with Entrepreneurship at ASU – a program that is supposedly designed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship with staff and students alike. This program, however, seems to have only demonstrated that ASU, the W.P. Carey School of Business, and the Entrepreneurship at ASU organizations are still stuck in the dark ages of a corporate driven world that favors pomp and fame over innovation and action.

I am calling out these three entities as the major players in all entrepreneurial activities sponsored by the university, and I am accusing them of doing just about everything completely wrong. As of the spring semester 2009, 62,476 students were enrolled at ASU. A recent press release from the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards praised ASU by honoring them with the number two spot on their list of student entrepreneurs at the university. There were 31. That is one-twentieth of a percent (.05%) of the enrolled students in a state where ASU says 98% of businesses are small businesses. 

The worst part? I promise you they missed countless students still involved with the university who are managing and creating businesses everyday.

ASU celebrated Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for the last few days. The daily email that was sent out in conjunction with GEW had a section each day dedicated to what the University referred to as a “student entrepreneur.” Three of the five featured were student employees of the university. No business. No startup. Now, maybe my definition is off, but working for the university and calling yourself a “creative problem solver” doesn’t really convey the sense of responsibility and persistent action that many people believe the label “entrepreneur” requires. Why not talk to Sharon at Polytechnic who operates a personal shopping service, or Neil who contracted house painting in the valley, or Andrew (a freshman) who runs a web design and consulting firm, or Kim, a recent graduate operating her own copy writing and marketing consultancy. More importantly, were these 4 people in your count of 31?

There were a number of events hosted through the university that were positioned as helpful sessions to allow potential and current student entrepreneurs to learn and grow their ideas and businesses.  Yet, there were no sessions on how to file incorporation paperwork with the Arizona Corporation Commission, or where to get help with business taxes, or resources on how to utilize ASU assets to assist in the creation and management of a student’s small business. There were no panels of student entrepreneurs talking about their successes and failures. There were coffee meetups and cocktail parties.

As a small business owner, entrepreneur, and student, I’m insulted and appalled. ASU, you have got it all wrong. Because you are so focused on proving that you have entrepreneurial activity, you have completely forgotten that it should never have to be proven at all – by providing the resources and helping students be entrepreneurs, you should be at the very front of the list because your students will be happy to let everyone know that “I got here because of ASU.” I’ve spent three and a half years in the W.P. Carey school, and almost all I’ve learned is simply how to work in a cubicle with an ignorant boss and small groups of people who are defective at their jobs. That’s harsh, but true. I’ve also met dozens of brilliant and wonderful friends, professors, and administrators along the way. What frustrates me is that many of them see these problems and don’t have any course of action to take to fix them.

I direct this letter not only to ASU, but to three important individuals. Michael Crow (President of Arizona State University), Robert Mittelstaedt (Dean of the W.P. Carey School of Business), and Terree Wasley (Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University). I am emailing a link to this post to all of you, and hope that this touches you in some way. I also have a request – I would love to meet with any or every one of you in order to give my time and effort to help make ASU all that it can be for student entrepreneurs, even though I am on my way out via graduation. I further challenge you to take the next step – find time when all three of you are available, and have a summit or town hall meeting to discuss these challenges and what can be done to promote true, real growth and innovation in the areas of business and entrepreneurship. I even have some lovely friends who frequent a co-working environment in Chandler who are willing to host such an event.

In the years I’ve been at ASU, my only regret lies in that I did not take action against the issues I saw as I traveled through my program. I now want to fix that, and wish to dedicate as much of my free time as I can to help push the programs and initiatives already instituted to their maximum potential, and help provide students at ASU the resources they need to start their own initiatives and continue to grow both the state and the university beyond what anyone ever expected.

I also request something of any student who reads this – give up your internship at some bank and go start a business. If you don’t have money to do so, go ask your parents to introduce you to a wealthy friend (trust me, they have some). When you’ve finished fundraising and started your business, fail. Fail spectacularly. You will never hear anyone in the W.P. Carey School tell you that, and yet it is quite possibly one of the absolute most important lessons to learn in the business world. Congratulations – you just learned more than any internship is ever going to teach you.

Having a problem like this is amazing – the need is there, and the want, and the drive. With a little push in the right direction and some real interaction between the community and the university, the ASU Entrepreneurship Initiatives can actually start doing everything they say on paper.

For the past few months, there has been a movement in Arizona. Some of you might say that this movement has been happening for a long time, but I’m a firm believer that it’s only now starting to take hold and take off. The creative class in Phoenix is starting to blossom and spread, and that is a wonderful thing. However, we have also very quickly become a group that is not only more social than ever, but a group that has decided that event after event is a necessity in order to help combat our geographic obstacle (read: the Valley is effing HUGE). This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, not only have these events happened in rapid succession, but it was decided that many of these events should happen in a very short time period. This is a problem.

I see it as two fundamental issues.

Firstly, it’s a problem because we are very quickly becoming a group of people who are giving up DOING something in order to attend a conference. It’s not an issue because the events are bad, or the attendees are stupid, or the venues are too unreachable. It’s an issue because we’re becoming a bunch of tech and creative posers. We’re saying that we all want to do wonderful things, and yet many of those things aren’t happening. This is probably a necessary step to take in order to start that kindling and make the movement tip, but since it’s so clear that it is an issue I see no reason why we can’t combat it from the start.

The second issue stems from that point, in that we’re essentially isolating the people that actually are doing something. Asking people who have client meetings, deadlines, and phones to answer to take an entire day out of their schedule for a conference where “All the people who won’t return your phone calls and who you’ve been trying to meet” is possibly the most backwards entrepreneurial concept I’ve heard in a long time. Shouldn’t those people be doing all they can to connect with the contacts they need, and not rely on an event that’s going to cost $100 just to get someone to return an email? If they can’t get back to you, they probably aren’t as important to you as you think.

For this specific issue, I propose a solution. Let’s ask those same people to attend an event from 9PM to 3AM on a Sunday night. Yes, many of the current attendees are doing client work at night like the rest of us, but we all use that as our “crushit” time and would probably be more willing to attend the event were it not in the middle of the week. Also, let’s not group everything together in a 5 day period. Have an event a week, or every two weeks, because we all know that the further we get from our events, the lesser our interactions in life are.

For the record, I did not attend AZEC, PHXWC, or any of the social gatherings that happened in the past week due to commitments to my business and education. I will be at PodCampAZ this weekend.

This isn’t a message to insult anyone or say that somebody or group did something wrong; instead it’s a request that we not try and forget what these events are truly cultivating – creativity, innovation, and what I believe to be the most important aspect of business. Friendship.