I teach a seminar each spring to twenty-four honors students from around the country and around the world. Last week we discussed the challenges of growing a social enterprise and more specifically the difficulty of creating sustainable revenue streams. The class became intrigued by the model suggested by Girl Scout...

Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde's recent article on our efforts at UNC to turn our university into an engine of innovation argues that America's research universities can make a profound difference in the battle to rebuild the country's economy and its middle class. With over 250 billion...

For the last year or so Holden Thorp and I have been talking about change. In our book, Engines of Innovation, we suggest virtually all of our major institutions are in crisis and that innovation and entrepreneurship offer a path forward. (We just posted the introduction to the...

Each year at this time our 100 student entrepreneurship class discusses innovation and entrepreneurship and the reading, coincidentally, is a book by the same name by Peter Drucker. Written in 1985, the book's examples are dated and most of its major themes have been repackaged in scores of more recent...

Fear and greed; for my entire professional life I have understood these two emotions to be the great motivators. Make your numbers, achieve your goals, beat your plan, and you will be rewarded with a big bonus, or better still, a substantial increase in the value of your equity. Surprise...

Last spring I taught a seminar on innovation to 24 first-year honors students who could objectively be described as among the brightest teenagers in the world. Halfway through the semester I caught myself flashing back to my former life as a CEO and as a venture capitalist. I spent my...

If you work long enough, even in high growth businesses or organizations, the inevitable bump in the road comes along, and sometimes that bump is more like a pot-hole or a ditch. When the pie is getting smaller, no one is happy. This axiom applies equally to companies, institutions, governments...

One of my first conversations at the beginning of a recent trip to China focused on the government's encouragement of a rebirth of Confucianism. When I asked for an explanation, my colleague asked me if I had ever been to the Confucian temple in Beijing and I admitted I had...

I spent most of a day last week participating in developing a strategy for a leading American software company as it seeks to expand in the rapidly growing health care market. We spent hours defining the business we were in and the many businesses we were not...

In an interview yesterday with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bill Clinton highlighted the crucial role of American colleges and universities in a world that is, in his words, "unequal, unstable and unsustainable." The back story to the President's vision involves both good news and bad news. The bottom line...

In an interview yesterday with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bill Clinton highlighted the crucial role of American colleges and universities in a world that is, in his words, "unequal, unstable and unsustainable." The backstory to the President's vision involves both good news and bad news. The bottom line is...

With over 250 billion dollars in endowment and intellectual firepower unrivaled anywhere in the world, this country's research universities are the crown jewels of our society. But these grim economic times and the complexity of the world's biggest problems demand that universities become problem-centered engines of innovation and increasingly adept...

As you head for the beach with a canvas bag full of science fiction, the activities of one of the world's great inventors will top anything you or your favorite author can possibly conjure up. This year's winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT award for invention, Dr. Joe DeSimone, (full disclosure...

The latest round of announcements from Google and Microsoft about their partnerships and initiatives to fix the US healthcare system reminds us all that it is seriously broken. Health care costs are growing at 4.4 times the rate of inflation and 3.7 times the rate of increase of the average...

On July 1, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the nation's leading universities, will have a new leader. In addition to being a distinguished academic chemist and the holder of multiple patents, UNC's new Chancellor is a serial entrepreneur. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in announcing...