The Art of Teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The podcast "The Art of Teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation" from the Stanford University Technology Ventures Program was a really excellent podcast.  It made me wish I was a student again and working on an MBA at Stanford.  Tina Seelig, author of the entrepreneurship book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World, presents some really amazing ideas that students have come up with when challenged to make money from next to nothing.

Examples include one class that was divided into groups and each group was given $5 and two hours to raise as much money as possible and then make a 3 minute presentation to the class.  The exercise was designed to help the students learn to challenge assumptions.  The team that made the most money was the team that realized that the most valuable thing they had was not the $5 or the two hours but the 3 minutes of class time.  They sold their 3 minute presentation time  to a company interested in recruiting Stanford MBA students.

This really is worth checking out if you like to think of yourself as a creative, out-of-the-box thinker. Check out the podcast on iTunes.

Here's Tina's book.