Practice what they teach: Utah's MBA programs provide hands-on training.

• Author: Blodgett, John
• Position: Entrepreneur Training

ENTREPRENEUR -- The title is a badge of drive and initiative. The entrepreneur is driven by his or her nature to invest considerable time and effort in pursuit of a goal. But the risk may pay off, or it may not. Adequate preparation can help businesspeople successfully make the jump into the unknown, and many budding entrepreneurs benefit from local schools' training and guidance.

Traditional business courses--finance, accounting, marketing and the like--are typically taught within a framework that prepares a student to become part of an existing organization. Coursework in entrepreneurship, on the other hand, provides the context and skills to help create reality from a dream and start an organization from scratch.

UB explored the entrepreneurship programs at three Utah business schools, as well as the options available at Salt Lake Community College.

University of Utah

At the Utah Entrepreneur Center in the David Eccles School of Business, one of director Leonard Black's challenges is finding appropriate textbooks. "A lot of programs seem too old-school," he says. "In typical classes you really don't get much more than theory. In academia they teach a lot of things, but to start a business is a different world."

To provide students with an experiential learning context, he hires professors who practice what they teach (Black himself has co-founded nine companies). "The thing that makes a successful entrepreneur is passion," he explains. More and more students, he says, would rather develop their own ideas than graduate from school and work for someone else. "I think we're giving students the real-time tools to get out there and make it happen."

One of the tools offered at the center is the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. Open to students throughout the state, the competition awards cash prizes to student teams with the most promising business ventures. They are judged by a panel comprising local professionals from all aspects of business, including investment banking, law and education, as well as established entrepreneurs. The center also recently established the Utah Student Venture Fund, which provides a real-world venture capital learning experience for students, and the Lassonde New Development Center, which brings together students from business, engineering and life sciences to help bring technologies created at the university to market.

Black points out that for every solid and successful idea, there are hundreds that never make it...