How Kellogg Teaches Entrepreneurship

What does the path look like for someone wanting to use Kellogg as a way to launch their own startup versus the venturing mind-specific path?

I think the key here is the venturing mind course is the starting point for launching a new business. Think of it as the starting gate. In New Venture Discovery, you take 10 weeks of discovery where you can actually identify a problem in your own innovation discovery pathway. You’ve seen a problem, you’re passionate about it, you’re iterating on that solution and you see if there’s a product-market fit.

At the end of that 10 weeks, if there is something there and you’ve tested the desirability of that particular business, you can move into the next course, which is also 10 weeks called New Venture Development. And that’s all about testing. We don’t want you getting investors or getting engineers. We’re doing fake landing pages, Wizard of Oz pilot tests, understanding the customer acquisition issues and ultimately getting an even better idea of product-market fit.

At the end of that class, about 30% of the student teams put their ideas—quote, unquote—to bed. Others can go on to New Venture Launch, which I’d say is more of the traditional business plan class that we’ve seen at universities. It’s about how to fund an early stage investment and how to do an investor pitch, etcetera.

All along this pathway is a whole group of other courses for students to take ad hoc to build their skill sets from digital marketing to entrepreneurial selling to three coding classes. Overarching all of this, there are co-curricular activities. One is the Zell Fellows, as I mentioned before. It’s an internal accelerator where we take 10 students, give them $10,000 to launch their business. Then they enter this alumni group of Zell Fellows from Michigan Ross and IDC (Herzliya) in Tel Aviv. And after that, we have the Pritzker Fellows, which allows a number of teams to continue on after graduation with their ideas.

Are there any specific areas or industries you are seeing entrepreneurial-minded students being interested in?

In many cases they’re all over the place. I think what’s interesting about Northwestern—and I think we continue to put a lot of emphasis on this—is the interdisciplinary courses. Northwestern has a treasure trove of IP (intellectual property) on campus that our students are very interested in commercializing. And some of our best deals coming out of here—especially in the business plan competition for the last couple of years—have been students commercializing IP from Northwestern.

The interdisciplinary courses across campus bring in medical students working with business students, engineering, law students and we know that is how you make great teams because you need a diversity of skill sets and experiences. And there are a lot of offerings on the Northwestern campus for students to collaborate and integrate and work with the IP on campus.

And another point: No one will probably ever know the names of these companies. Because they’re b-to-b and they’ll be acquired by someone else—you know a medical device company or a physical science company—the end game is probably in acquisition and no one will ever know their name.

What type of strength is there in the entrepreneurial community in Chicago compared to some of the more obvious coastal hubs like San Francisco or New York City?

For me, I see it as very vibrant. In full disclosure, I’m a member of 1871, which is a technology hub of Chicago, and it just keeps growing and just expanded another 75,000-square-feet. Our students are down there in the summer. Our alumni are down there. And most of our faculty are from the entrepreneurial community. We have seven or eight VCs who are teaching, the head of Techstars is teaching, the people who run Matter, which is the technology health care hub, teach here. One of the things I like about our faculty—and there are about 19 or 20 of them—all are from the community and are so willing to give to the students here and make sure they are integrated back into the community all of the time. But once again, a lot of these businesses are b-to-b. How many people know Cleversafe or Fieldglass or AvantCredit or others that have made billion dollar exits? Did you know there were so many unicorns in Chicago?

What are some upcoming strategies and research areas in teaching entrepreneurship that are most exciting to you?

Again, speaking to being nimble, we are adding a new course next quarter called Creativity as a Business Tool. It is being taught by a practitioner from IDEO with a tenured faculty member—so kind of an interesting combo. It’s basically how to lock and harmonize the creativity of teams in a business environment. How do we ideate in teams? Think how many times you may have been in a business meeting or corporate meeting and they go, ‘let’s have a brainstorming session?’ And people kind of look at a white board and doodle away. This is an actual methodology of doing brainstorming with a purpose in a methodology that can really unlock and harmonize the creativity of teams. The course is already totally filled. It could be a hallmark of our entrepreneurial curriculum moving forward, which I think is very interesting. And just like the venturing mindset, it’s applicable to any business and any stage of its lifecycle.

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