Workshop Cultivates Oklahoma Entrepreneurs

Experimentation plays a huge role in entrepreneurship and an innovation economy. We expect things to fail; in fact, our mantra is fail fast — the idea being that if something isn’t going to work, the sooner we find that out, the better.

But there are times when things go right the first time. That’s when we have the wonderful opportunity to take those good ideas and make them better over time.

That’s the way it is with Oklahoma’s Who Wants to Be an Entrepreneur? workshop. We’ve just completed our ninth round of this annual one-day event.

This year, about 250 university and college students attended. The conference was expanded to include a session for nearly 40 faculty advisers and a technology showcase for about 90 community leaders.

“They come from all over the state,” said Sarah Seagraves, i2E’s vice president of marketing. “It’s inspiring to see so many students interested in entrepreneurship and in starting their own businesses,”

Not every student attending plans to launch a startup upon graduation.

“There are also students attending who are likely to go to work for existing companies but participate because they want a better understanding of all the aspects of running a business, not just accounting, marketing or engineering,” Seagraves said.

Seagraves has been involved with the workshop since EPSCoR (Oklahoma Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) and i2E teamed up to develop the idea. I asked her what had changed since that first session.

“The students are more engaged with the sessions and asking better questions,” she said.

“They are more informed, tuned in and involved. I think that’s because the idea of entrepreneurship has been growing throughout the state. Many of the schools have entrepreneurship specialties, and almost every college has entrepreneurial classes. We can tell that the information we are trying to convey is mirroring what is being taught in the classroom.”

With this and other entrepreneur development programs, it’s not so much that we are building entrepreneurship into Okie DNA; it’s likely been there all along. It’s just that we’re giving it a vitamin shot.

The earlier our young people wake up to entrepreneurial possibilities and ideas, the more entrepreneurs our state will yield.

Copyright © 2011, The Oklahoma Publishing Company

Story authored by Tom Walker.  Walker is president and CEO of i2E Inc., a nonprofit corporation that mentors many of the state’s technology-based startup companies. i2E receives state appropriations from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology. Contact Walker at [email protected].

DID YOU KNOW? Oklahoma State University was named by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine as a 2011 top 25 school for graduate and undergraduate entrepreneurship programs. The University of Oklahoma ranked in the top 10 of the top 25 undergraduate list.