UW-Madison gets funding to develop entrepreneurship initiative

The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received $50,000 from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, Mo., to plan how to stimulate entrepreneurial values and skills across the campus.

UW–Madison was one of 15 winners in the Kauffman Collegiate Entrepreneurial Initiative. The next level of competition provides awards of up to $5 million.

Provost Peter Spear and School of Business Dean Michael Knetter initiated the planning project, which seeks to stimulate entrepreneurial values, skills and knowledge, particularly involving technology and social issues.

The project will focus on encouraging resourcefulness and creativity in finding and actively using opportunities, and will also emphasize on social entrepreneurship – for example, the creation of a new rural cooperative for sustaining natural prairie wildlife. It envisions taking UW–Madison’s existing programs in technological entrepreneurship to a new level; focusing, for example, on the launch of a start-up company based on a new scientific breakthrough or the development of a new product. The project encompassess both research and teaching activities.

“I am pleased UW–Madison’s initial vision made it to the next level,” says UW–Madison Chancellor John D. Wiley. “This campus has already created exceptional cross- campus entrepreneurship initiatives not present at other schools. This project will help us spotlight social entrepreneurship, tackle new frontiers in technology entrepreneurship and explore how we can deepen entrepreneurial values across the whole campus.”

Helping to craft the proposal and playing key roles in the planning process are the following UW–Madison deans: Elton Aberle, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences; Gilles Bousquet, International Studies; Phillip Certain, College of Letters and Science; Robin Douthitt, School of Human Ecology; Kenneth Davis, Law School; Michael Knetter, School of Business; Paul Peercy, College of Engineering; and Charles Read, School of Education. Faculty and staff in each school are also involved.

The proposal was developed by a team comprised of Professor Anne Miner, executive director of INSITE (Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship); Professor Ramon Aldag, executive director, and Larry Cox, director, of the business school’s Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship.