Deming Center.

• Author: LAINSON, SUZANNE
• Position: Entrepreneur of the Year award to Jeff Bezos - Brief Article

CU'S ENTREPRENEURIAL PROGRAM DESERVES MORE ATTENTION

Two news events from the past few months: On Aug. 29, the University of Colorado's Deming Center announced the appointment of a new director. On Nov. 7, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos came to Boulder to receive the center's second annual Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Guess which event was treated as big news and which one was not.

Plugging Bezos might be fun, but the real story should be the school that invited him. The Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado-Boulder opened in 1995, and got a big boost in 1998 when Robert Deming, an alumnus and former CEO/founder of Toastmaster Inc., and his wife Beverly gave the program $3 million. Approximately 75 percent of CU-Boulder's MBA students choose entrepreneurship as their area of focus.

One reason there hasn't been more press about the program is that it represents a classic "Is the glass half full or half empty?" situation. It's ranked among the top 25 in the country (US News & World Report ranks it 16th and Success ranks it 22nd); on the other hand, it's not in the top 10. Considering that there are at least 130 programs in the country (according to Success), a top-25 ranking is saying a lot. But a top-10 ranking brings a whole new level of national recognition, something Colorado could really use.

Still, the Deming Center has something to offer that other programs do not--it's based in Colorado, If you want to work in Colorado and network among its business leaders, the program is for you. Burke Blackman, a 1999 graduate who is now manager of strategic development at Inflow, a Denver-based e-business service provider, says that in two years at the school he "met more than 50 successful entrepreneurs and worked on strategic projects with a handful of them."

Real world experience is what these students value. According to Mike Benson, a 1997 graduate, "I had the opportunity to analyze literally hundreds of business plans and participate in every aspect of the venture financing process." That experience led to two jobs in Boulder, first with venture capital firm Wolf Ventures and then as associate director of Gartner...