The Wall Street Journal this week featured an article focused on the ways top business schools are touting how many successful start-ups they spawn. At Harvard Business School (HBS), the success of entrepreneurial MBAs is credited in great part to the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.
The Rock Center provides a range of support and resources to would-be HBS entrepreneurs, including the Rock Accelerator Program and the New Venture Competition, which both offer guidance and funding to promising ventures. The Rock Center also provides students with early-stage feedback and features an Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program.
In response to growing demand over the past decade, the school now boasts more than 30 faculty members focused on entrepreneurship in either their research or course development or both, the school reports. And more than 20 percent of the courses HBS students choose as electives in their second year are entrepreneurship-related.
“It’s courses, it’s the entrepreneurship center, it’s the ecosystem, it’s role models, it’s admissions…” said Professor Tom Eisenmann when asked what has driven the entrepreneurial surge at HBS. Access to funding is not inconsequential, he adds. “If you’re working on a business and you can push it far enough while you’re in the MBA program, you’re in a place where you’re rarely more than a phone call or an email away from somebody in several VC firms.”
Learn more about HBS’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.
