How Kellogg Teaches Entrepreneurship

Linda Darragh, The Larry Levy Executive Director of the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative and a clinical professor of entrepreneurial practice at the Kellogg School of Management. Courtesy photo

What is the venturing mind and how does it influence how entrepreneurship is taught at Kellogg?

We revamped all of the entrepreneurship courses just over three years ago. And we tried to do it in a logical and comprehensive way to really understand entrepreneurship and its various forms and stages in the lifecycle of a business. That sounds a little counterintuitive because most people view entrepreneurship as just launching businesses. But the skills and experience required to launch a business come from the skills that are required to grow and scale businesses. And so we find different challenges at different times in that growth cycle of business. Therefore, we decided to build the curriculum on a path of not only new venture launch or creation, but also curricular and co-curricular activities around growth and scaling.

And then we realized even in corporate innovation, the basic elements of entrepreneurship or the entrepreneurial mindset are in high demand at corporations. What we’ve realized over the last couple years, the core course, New Venture Discovery, is really where students learn this venturing mindset. It’s learning about the process of identifying problems, verifying problems, and then ideation to find solutions with a good product market fit. That skill set and understanding that process is applicable in any stage of a business.

We now have about 300 students that go through this course. And from there, we find students are moving into our corporate innovation classes, our growth and scaling classes, or our new innovation classes. We have students in our new venture courses finding these are highly relevant as they go back to their family businesses to reignite them. Even students moving into private equity and middle-market companies take these courses for the, once again, value creation reigniting innovation within companies.

Do you have any examples of differences and similarities of teaching towards the continued entrepreneurial mindset within an organization versus creation and ideation of an early stage venture?

Within the growth and scaling path, [what] we’re finding in the context of the Midwest is that we have a lot of very un-sexy businesses here that are the bread and butter of the U.S. economy. And they’re struggling now with the ability to keep relevant. Students are able to work with these companies to not only look at their manufacturing processes, or operations, or marketing, but also their management. It’s a general management skill to go in and look at where the problems are, figuring out how to ideate the solutions of the problems, and then finding value in these companies that still add value to our economy if they are better run.

We’ve had students in our summer internship program last year who went into these good old b-to-b companies in the Midwest and worked everything from the lines to the management offices looking for problems and the solutions they could work on with management. A lot of people say, ‘I love working with entrepreneurial companies and early-stage companies because I can get my hands in all aspects of the general management—the strategy and the marketing.’ And once again, students are having those opportunities in middle-market companies to do the same.

Where is the middle-market demand for entrepreneurial-minded MBAs coming from? Is this an industry demand you’re seeing or are Kellogg students seeking to enter these companies?

We’re getting alumni market feedback and we try to keep our program fairly nimble so we can meet that feedback and see what sticks for the students. We did a course this year on entrepreneurship through acquisition. And to be honest, I was wondering how the enrollment be. But it was fully enrolled with a long waiting list, which was incredible.

And we’ve also started to pilot this Zell Fellows program. This year, we’re piloting a new version of that, which is looking at students who want to acquire and own businesses. In the pilot this year, we had two women who have been groomed by their parents to take over the family business in June. And through the Zell Fellows program, they can do the research on how they’re going to, once again, identify the problem, ideate the solution, in an environment where they have the mentors, faculty and alumni to craft that thesis that they can take back to their parents come June.

There are others in that course who want to do search funds, which could lead to the acquisition of a company. And there are a few who have been eying middle-market companies where they would like to enter in more of a C-Suite position and evolve with the company to hopefully take over in the future. So a variety of pathways to ownership of these middle-market companies.