Entrepreneurial Spirit Soars on B-School Campuses

Thomas Kinnear of Michigan's Zell Lurie Institute reports that business-plan competitions and entrepreneurship classes are packed

With the job market still rocky, a growing number of MBA students are launching their own businesses straight out of school. Recruiting remains down at many campuses this year, and as a result, starting a company looks more appealing than ever to beleaguered B-school students. At business schools across the country, students are signing up for entrepreneurship classes in droves, entering business school competitions, and dangling their carefully crafted business plans before angel investors and venture capitalists. In response, schools are escalating the support they offer to aspiring entrepreneurs, launching new classes and counseling them on how to get a business off the ground in a difficult economic climate.

At the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business (Ross Full-Time MBA Profile), entrepreneurship is thriving. The institute runs a business competition, the Michigan Business Challenge, which awards nearly $60,000 in funding to winners. This year the contest received a record 85 applications from Michigan University teams. Business plans ranged from an online retailer of premium hair care products for black women to a company that will sell electric motors to long-haul truck manufacturers.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reporter Alison Damast recently spoke to Thomas Kinnear, director of the Zell Lurie Insititute, about how the school is assisting students who want to launch their own business.

Alison Damast: Entrepreneurship is hotter than ever on business school campuses. How do you account for the new wave of interest in entrepreneurship?

Thomas Kinnear: It's a trend that will probably only get bigger and bigger. What is driving [student entrepreneurs] is they see more opportunity in controlling their own fate. To some extent, what they see around them now is that even successful companies are letting people go. I think what has happened is the practicalities of the financial meltdown over the past 18 months have driven a lot of smart people who thought they were going to Wall Street to head instead into entrepreneurship. Their view of being an entrepreneur is to be a fund manager on their own, start a small boutique capital firm, or launch a more traditional company.

How many members of the school's MBA class will end up taking a class at the Lurie Institute during their time in school?

About half of the MBA class will be touched by one of our courses in entrepreneurship in any given year. A few years ago we offered less diversity, but now we have such a broad range of classes they are basically all full. We also offer quite a few classes that you have to apply to get into, like one called the Wolverine Venture Fund class, which teaches MBA students about the venture capital business.