While preparing for my meeting with former Verizon President Dennis Bone I wondered about the approach that such a successful corporate leader would take as the founding Director of the newly endowed Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship at Montclair State University (MSU). My curiosity was quickly sated during our conversation as Dennis dove right in to share the work he has been doing to inaugurate the Feliciano Center’s Certificate of Entrepreneurship Program.
During the six plus months that Dennis has been at the helm of the Center, he has focused on the community within the university and the community surrounding it. He has met with faculty, alumni, and entrepreneurs and found what he described as “a richness of resources within arm’s reach” that has charged him up for the program beginning in the fall.
At the outset of taking the position Dennis explained that he invested a fair amount of time exploring entrepreneurship. This led him to a particular interest in the link between creativity and entrepreneurship. This link is something that current research is beginning to touch upon which I had become aware of through an article submitted to my web site AmericanEntrepreneurship.com. The article is titled “Creative Individuals and Entrepreneurship: Is there an Inherent Attraction?” which Dennis read after our meeting.
With his interest in creativity and innovation Dennis was pleased to discover multiple resources within the MSU community. Two of those resources are Professor Iain Kerr in the Liberal Arts school who “teaches courses on creativity all over the world” and Merrill Brown who is the inaugural director of MSU’s School of Communication. The former is an internationally recognized artist and writer whose work has been widely exhibited at museums such as The Whitney Museum of American Art and Mass MoCA. He will be presenting a “creativity module” in the new program. Director Brown was the first editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com and that is just one of a number of highly noteworthy positions he has held in journalism and media over a thirty plus year career. A good portion of it has been as an entrepreneur and Dennis sees Brown as “a strong entrepreneurial force on campus and a go-to guy for advice given the depth of his experience”.
Having key resources now in place, Dennis is very optimistic about creating an inter-disciplinary entrepreneurial program that will gain the broad interest of MSU students. He also identified one segment of the university’s community for nurturing —the predominant female student population at MSU that is close to 60%. Upon learning that women comprise only 23% of entrepreneurs, he has set the involvement of female students in the program as a priority. He also plans to establish an advisory board of twelve members that will reflect the diversity of the community.
One other goal is to make the program “experiential for the students” that will “unleash their creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial drive”. The fall Certificate of Entrepreneurship Program will begin with three three credit courses comprised of inter-disciplinary student teams. The teams will address real entrepreneurial challenges that the faculty are currently working on and will have the added element of “requiring the faculty to pitch to the student teams”. This lets the students choose the projects they will work on during the semester. The inaugural section starting in the fall will have about forty students and will be repeated again in January 2014 with another class.
Before wrapping up our discussion, Dennis was pleased to share that the former editor of NJBIZ, Sharon Waters, had just started as Program Manager for the Center. She will “be helping to build the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, bring a broad range of contacts to the outside world, and particularly contribute her experience and knowledge of social media that will be critical in promoting their efforts”.
In terms of entrepreneurship, the first key personnel addition to any start-up enterprise is a big step forward. During his first six months Dennis moved from vision to execution. Now with the hiring of Waters he not only has brought in another great resource for the Center, he has moved from “I” to “Team”.
