A few days ago, I wrote a post that generated a bit of very insightful, relevant discussion to this ongoing push towards innovation, community, and entrpreneurship within IST and the greater Penn State area.

I’d like to talk about what has been accomplished.

1. Several Penn State companies have launched within the past few years and are on their way to being successful.

2. In the last year, the formal entrepreneurial community has had a big boost via Lion Launch Pad, Blue Lion Networks, Invention 2 Venture, Ideablob, Ideapitch, and a few news-worthy events for Penn State co-founded teams.

3. In the past few months, the informal entrepreneurial community has had a big boost via blogs like IST Building, Matt Maisel, PSU startups, and get togethers, like the one we had at the Indian Pavilion. With ideas like one Varun has been tossing around about informal TED gatherings to watch and discuss the videos, I’m sure this will only grow in the next months.

4. Next year will kick off with not one, but two, major startup events for the community.

5. A major VC firm is opening up an office in State College.

(Just kidding on no. 5)

No doubt about it, for a ship this big, no matter how hard you tug on the sails, it takes a long time to get it moving in a different direction, but I believe the steps are being made.

It’s important, however, that we not point to the small successes as proof Penn State is headed in the right direction. I often find, the more you lean on past successes, the more complacent you get, thinking that you’ve done enough already, when that is rarely and hardly the case.

That said, one interesting discussion point is the Chicken vs. Egg debate.

Does the chicken — (this case a Venture Capital firm/ major business plan competiton, and in general, an entrepreneurial platform that can support and help create sustainable businesses)– come first, or is it the egg? (Egg being a successful company that launches).

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, of which I’d like to share snippets before I provide my own thoughts.

The title, interestingly enough, is “Facebook Ignites Entrepreneurial Spirit at Harvard” and here are some excerpts:

Egg:

Mr. Adler is just one of the Harvard students who have caught start-up fever since Facebook, founded when Mr. Zuckerberg was at Harvard in 2004, exploded in popularity. Other recent Harvard-born start-ups include Internet companies Kirkland North Inc., Drop.io Inc. and Labmeeting Inc. And Facebook has become a model for these start-ups on many fronts, from the look of company Web sites to their corporate strategies.

“I would not hesitate for a second to say Facebook’s a motivator,” says Paul Bottino, director of Harvard’s Technology & Entrepreneurship Center. “Facebook creates would-be Facebooks.” He says a start-up contest this year attracted 55 entries, up from 10 to 18 for past contests.

It takes time …

And the idea of a college start-up culture isn’t new to Silicon Valley. Stanford University leased land to Hewlett-Packard Co., started by Stanford alums, as far back as the 1950s. Today, Stanford President John Hennessy is a board member at Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc., two companies that began as projects at Stanford. Yahoo also began as a Stanford project.

Harvard, though, has long had a relatively sleepy start-up culture and has shunned a cozy relationship between academics and industry. “Harvard is very noticeably behind,” says Paul Graham, a partner at Y Combinator, a Cambridge, Mass., and Mountain View, Calif., company that invests in start-ups, including Scribd and Kirkland North.

Chicken:

Now, Harvard is taking steps to get ahead. In 2000, the university loosened a rule prohibiting students from running companies from dorm rooms, but it still required that start-ups notify the university of their existence and “gain approval.” Last year, it discarded the notification-and-approval rule, although some restrictions still exist.

In the past eight years, Harvard has introduced more classes, clubs and contests for entrepreneurs. Mr. Bottino says those decisions weren’t directly related to Facebook, but he acknowledges that Facebook’s success has given Harvard students a more-entrepreneurial bent.

I personally believe the process runs in parallel; that is, it’s not a case of the Chicken or the egg, but rather a bit of both.

The push to entrepreneruship happens, from within the student community, graduate community, faculty community, and general region community meanwhile the entrepreneurs themselves, like Boxtr founder and PSU student Rory Spangler, continue to build successful companies.

Without a doubt, a college-focused world-wide product like Facebook would increase interest at Penn State, but I argue 10 successful smaller-scale companies would have the same impact, if not the same use.

All that said, and I must say I am not particularly concerned for selfish reasons whether or not PSU engenders a successful enterpreneurship jumping pad — I plan on turning the company I recently co-founded into a successful, sustainable business, whether or not a single Penn State company ever forms.

That being said, I believe firmly in an equal playing field (although I realize the world is not a fair place); I believe every person, and most definitely every Penn State student, should have the opportunity to pursue their dreams, and more importantly be encouraged to reach those dreams and have a platform to do so.

For those particular ones with the entreneurship bent, let’s hope we can all keep building a community that will see that platform be built.

Tags: community, debate, discussion, Entrepreneurship

Categories: Entrepreneurship