Entrepreneurial Innovation Academy: The leading edge of business and corporate innovation

Description of the video:

Donald F. Kuratko, Director, Entrepreneurial Innovation Academy:

The Entrepreneurial Innovation Academy is designed as the experiential components of a student's classroom education. We feel we're an elite academy and so we feel that only the best innovative minds get in. I always put a challenge out to students that if, in fact, you believe that you do possess the capabilities, then we expect them to apply and interview. I think it's a very difficult academy to get into because you really have to pass some high hurdles, the final one being an interview with me.

Andrew Knerr, Full-Time MBA student:

Being in the Entrepreneurial Innovation Academy gives you a really great hands-on experience, really great practice with innovation and business planning. This is an experience that you're not going to get just inside the classroom. You're hearing from people that have been there and done that.

Jaspreet Dhamija, Full-Time MBA student:

If someone is interested in creating their own business or launching their own business and they want to experience what would be the different challenges, this is the place to be.

Andrew Knerr:

The structure of the Entrepreneurial Innovation Academy is such that you start off in your second year with a week of working with a venture capital firm, where you think about some of the ideas that they're trying to possibly invest in and you build those out with a team of other members of the Academy.

Donald F. Kuratko:

In the High Alpha Challenge, one of the things that we've tried to do is have the students actually go down to Indianapolis to the High Alpha offices. This is not just some case study project, this is real life because the decisions they make are going to be used by High Alpha and implemented, so those decisions are extraordinarily important, and that's why the work the students do is extraordinarily important.

Jaspreet Dhamija:

This was a really great project where we were taught that somewhere in the lifetime, later on, we have to make decisions based upon limited data, as well as within less time.

Andrew Knerr:

Second semester, we go on a trip to the San Francisco Bay area where we get to visit a lot of startup companies, and this is an experience that you wouldn't have outside of the Entrepreneurial Innovation Academy.

Donald F. Kuratko:

The Velocity Conference is deep immersion. We've gone to places like eBay or LinkedIn and we go in and not only do we get the tour, but then we sit down with some of their chief innovation officers and learn about corporate innovation. We have a mini mentoring day. Eighteen board members from the West Coast all come and we break down in tables. So our students get to visit with these top professionals and exchange their cards and get to know these people and they get to know you and try to help you in your career.

Jaspreet Dhamija:

I would say that I got my summer internship because of what I learned through the Entrepreneurship Academy, as well as the connections that Dr. K helped me make.

Donald F. Kuratko:

Today, every corporation talks about innovation as their mantra, so if we can show our students some of the implementation ways and the things that they can actually use inside of companies, I believe they're going to escalate their careers faster because organizations want to promote those types of people that have the entrepreneurial mindset and understand how to implement that.

Andrew Knerr:

I think at the start, I thought about innovation and entrepreneurship as just a way to start a new business. And now, the way I think about it is that entrepreneurship, it's kind of an ongoing practice.

Donald F. Kuratko:

The experiences they get through doing the work with High Alpha ventures, through the Velocity Conference experience, the deep immersion, we're setting them off in the right direction.