Entrepreneurship & Innovation

CU Boulder Is Named a Top 50 Ignition School

Kelsey Cipolla — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 17:46:33 +0000

CU Boulder Is Named a Top 50 Ignition School Kelsey Cipolla Wed, 10/30/2024 - 11:46

Kristen Fischer

Fast Company and Inc. released their inaugural list of “Ignition Schools”—institutions that impact society through innovation and entrepreneurship. How is the Leeds School of Business igniting some of that impact?

Fast Company and Inc. recently published their first list of Ignition Schools—the top 50 institutions that lead in entrepreneurship and innovation—and CU Boulder made the list.

The Leeds School of Business and Deming Center for Entrepreneurship play an integral part in CU’s culture of entrepreneurship and innovation, thanks to the dynamic teaching and research that shapes trailblazing entrepreneurs long before they graduate.

Brad Werner, the Deming Center’s faculty director of the New Venture Launch program and the JRN Faculty Scholar, who teaches undergraduates through PhD students, has seen Leeds grow tremendously since coming to the university seven years ago. He teaches the fundamentals of starting a business and shows students how to understand and solve problems. Classes go beyond just memorizing facts; they teach students how to think.

“I think it’s really eye-opening for the students,” Werner said. “They become empowered.”

Whether students launch businesses or not, they still can bring entrepreneurial problem-solving skills to the table at large companies. “It’s not just starting businesses, it’s creative problem-solving, which goes everywhere,” Werner added.

Erick Mueller, an adjunct professor and Deming’s executive director, says classes are unique because they use existing partnerships that give students revenue to pursue ideas. Faculty often leverage their own connections in the business arena to support students.

“We connect students with world-leading experts and scientists,” Mueller said. “There’s all this breadth of opportunities for them.”

Another differentiator: Faculty members guide their students and graduates to scale up after their business launches.

“We meet them where they’re at and we help them move a step or two forward,” Mueller added.

“It’s not just starting businesses, it’s creative problem-solving, which goes everywhere.”

Brad Werner, Faculty Director of New Venture Launch

Deming stands above

Leeds was ranked the 14th best public undergraduate entrepreneurship program by U.S. News & World Report in its  2024 Best Undergraduate Business Program  rankings, thanks to award-winning professors and programs at the Deming Center.

The center has won multiple awards from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers—the preeminent organization in entrepreneurship education worldwide—including the Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across Disciplines award and the Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovation award. In addition, the center won global acclaim in the 2020 Innovations That Inspire Challenge by the AACSB International and the 2019 MBA Roundtable Innovator Award for their programs.

In addition, Deming hosted the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference (GEIRC), which drew attendees from around the globe to highlight top research papers in the field.

From world-class to worldwide

The New Venture Launch (NVL) program, which is a class open to about 20 students each spring, has churned out 12 companies in the last two years—10 of which are still going strong. �鶹��Ժ in the program compete in the New Venture Challenge, a competition that unites students and the greater Boulder community to formulate and fund ideas. 

Deming’s podcast, Creative Distillation, hosted by Werner and Jeff York, the faculty director of the Deming Center and associate dean for strategic initiatives, has helped put the program on the map, bringing together entrepreneurs and researchers from around the globe to review their research and share insights.

“We’re not only doing work that’s important to Boulder…we’re doing work that’s world-class,” Werner pointed out.

Colorado, one of the technology hubs for quantum computing, leads the world in terms of quantum organizations and jobs. Faculty and students engage with these startups, and several graduates are even leading them.

Deming also brings in leaders in the entrepreneurial arena who have real-world experience to serve as instructors. David Brown, who co-founded the massive commercial accelerator Techstars in Boulder, is now a faculty member associated with the Deming Center.

Currently, Werner is looking to create a Founder’s Program that will build a support system to help founders who raise money while they’re in their early stages. Intuitive Foundation will fund the program, which could morph into regional chapters that provide support to students long after they graduate from CU Boulder.

“We have this amazing area of talent that they’re looking to help,” Werner said.

In addition to sending students to South Africa and Israel to act as consultants to local entrepreneurs, the school runs a five-year program to help rural areas and native communities in Colorado grow ventures by presenting workshops. Leeds engages a local chamber of commerce or economic development organization that will empower entrepreneurs to improve the local economy.

“It’s not just helping students, it’s helping Colorado,” Mueller said.

York has published several studies on environmental entrepreneurship, which is the intersection of creating eco-friendly and economically friendly startups that solve problems. The fusion of sustainability and business is a big focus in the Boulder region and has led to many companies launching in the area.

“It’s a place where people care deeply about environmental issues but also social issues,” York said.

This special interest—along with the university’s involvement in environmental ventures on and off campus—is unique to CU Boulder. York pointed out that many visitors to the university’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute also collaborate with Deming to bring innovations to life in the business world.

“The university’s willingness to collaborate throughout campus and throughout the community is a real driver of change,” Werner said.

Today’s innovators, future igniters

Student success contributes to Deming’s notoriety in the entrepreneurial education arena.

For example, Jamie Saunders (pictured right, center), a Leeds MBA graduate, took part in the New Venture Launch, where she drilled down her idea and created Affix Communities. The startup makes tiny homes that become legal year-round residences in most jurisdictions, paving the way for more affordable homeownership.

Icarus Quantum, which was pioneered by Poolad Imany, Kaden Sisk and Christian Wagner, is developing quantum dot technology to further secure quantum communications and better protect new computers. It provides expanded data security that’s about 70 times more efficient than competitors, according to Werner.

Sristy Agrawal, Cameron Ghia, Ty Silver and Madeline Maersk Moller founded Mesa Quantum to build next-generation quantum devices. The company makes chip-sized atomic clocks that enable high-bandwidth use, precision GPS navigation and better connectivity in smartphones, computers and other electronic devices.

“One of the most valuable skills I gained through the course was the practical knowledge of entrepreneurship, which was transformative for me, coming from an academic background,” said Agrawal, the current CEO. She completed her PhD in physics from CU and took the New Venture Launch class.

“I learned how to develop a business from the ground up. [The New Venture Launch] course gave me the tools to not only register my company but also build my first pitch deck, secure my initial grant and launch Mesa Quantum Systems,” added Agrawal, whose company has raised $4 million in venture capital and secured a $2 million government grant from the U.S. Space Force and the State of Colorado.

Aloukika Patro, a sophomore leaning toward majoring in finance and management, along with pursuing the entrepreneurship certificate, is grateful for the resources and support she has gotten from Deming—especially in the Innovation Workshop Series.

“They give us insights on the business basics and how to bring it to reality,” said Patro, who is launching her own nonprofit organization to raise awareness about kindness and mental health among youth.

“One skill that I have taken away from these workshops is the importance of having a growth mindset, as starting a business or nonprofit can be challenging at times. I believe that having a growth mindset and persevering through challenges in the journey is what is going to lead us to success.”

Fast Company and Inc. released their inaugural list of institutions that impact society through innovation and entrepreneurship. How is the Leeds School of Business igniting some of that impact?

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Leeds Hosts the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 20:14:26 +0000

Leeds Hosts the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/27/2024 - 14:14

Attendees of the 2024 Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference arrived from Taiwan, Australia, China, the United Kingdom, Italy, and more to explore the wide-ranging impacts of entrepreneurship and innovation.

The Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference (GEIRC) took place in Boulder on June 13 and 14 after a five-year hiatus. In collaboration with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, the 2024 GEIRC brought together a diverse group of scholars from around the world to discuss the cross-disciplinary impact of entrepreneurship.

Janet Bercovitz, conference co-chair and Leeds’ strategy and entrepreneurship PhD program director, explained that after the break, the team at Leeds’ Deming Center and the steering committee composed of members from the collaborating colleges wanted to “bring the conference back with a bang.” The goal was to be more global and inclusive as well as to build awareness and excitement about GEIRC.

Bringing a global community together

The conference provides a unique opportunity for global collaboration by moving locations each year and bringing attendees from across the world together. Bercovitz explained that “broadening the conference helps researchers. A lot of research is done in the U.S., and a lot of data is U.S. and U.K. oriented. Getting a wider view from an international perspective provides opportunities to develop new insights and data.”

Attendees arrived from Taiwan, Australia, China, the United Kingdom, Italy, and more to explore the wide-ranging impacts of entrepreneurship and innovation. “This year,” said Betsy Klein, associate director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, “the sub-theme of our conference was using entrepreneurship to solve some of our greatest problems, like income inequality, health care, climate change, and more.”

“By being international and being intentional in our call for papers across all types of research on entrepreneurship,” Klein continued, “we have the best opportunities to make the world a better place.”

While the Leeds School of Business has an incredible local focus on the community in Boulder and Colorado, the conference also supports the school’s goal of having a global impact. “Bringing scholars from all around the world to Boulder to highlight the wonderful things that the Leeds School and Boulder have to offer aligns nicely with that mission,” said conference co-chair Jeff York, who serves as Leeds’ associate dean for strategic initiatives and research director of the Deming Center.

A cross-disciplinary lens on entrepreneurship

“We’re in entrepreneurship—we believe everything can have an element of entrepreneurial thinking and that any industry can take advantage of thinking like an entrepreneur,” Klein said. This belief brought together researchers from across disciplines, including organizational behavior, finance, law, and more.

“It was impressive to see the diversity of different lenses that were presented,” York added. “People discussed work from areas outside of their disciplines, and that sort of cross-disciplinary collaboration is what really makes the conference stand out.”

The blending of international attendees with different areas of research created the opportunity for attendees to network and consider future collaboration. “The research community [at the conference] is unique,” Klein explained. “The papers that are presented are not all faculty from one school. The scholars build great connections, which offers so many different points of view. We often see PhD students—who are from, for example, University of Washington, CU Boulder, and Oxford—collaborating on a paper.”

GEIRC facilitates these cross-disciplinary connections through thoughtful selection of papers and presentations.

Selecting the right research

One main goal of the conference was to receive high quality paper submissions and curate cohesive presentation sessions. After receiving more than 100 submissions, the review committee selected around 40 to highlight during the event. Over the two-day conference, there were a dozen unique sessions that covered corporate innovation, governance, stakeholder engagement, entrepreneurship for the public good, and more.

“We ended up having dual tracks because we had so many quality papers,” Bercovitz shared. “And the sessions were united by central themes. For example, we had one session that looked at the agglomeration of economies.” While the papers featured in that session focused on different elements of how economies come together, a central theme of how locations are important emerged.

The conference also provided a new opportunity for PhD students to share their work in three-minute presentations called “Flash Talks.” By stripping the students’ research to the most important parts, it helped them gain exposure to a larger network and get feedback from experienced researchers during breaks. “Three minutes is very tight for people because you usually have about 15 minutes,” York explained. “But it was one of the most popular parts of the conference because sharing research rapid-fire is interesting. You’re hitting the stuff that really matters, and you’re getting people talking.”

What’s next for GEIRC

Next year, the conference travels to Taiwan, and members of the Leeds community will have the opportunity to sit on the paper review committee and support the planning of the conference. “It’s a good opportunity to continue engaging with partners from around the world,” York shared.

As the conference continues to grow, co-chairs Bercovitz and York hope that the cross-disciplinary perspective will continue to be a priority, as this opens the door to special issues in research journals or future panel sessions outside of the conference. Adding more partners to the conference is also a priority.

“We are definitely going to be adding a partner in Asia, and I’d love to see a partner from the Global South,” said York. “By adding South America, for example, the conference really begins to reach every corner of the globe.”

Locally, the team at the Deming Center is also looking forward to releasing new episodes of its podcast, Creative Distillation, this fall. Each episode highlights a recent study to discuss how the research is valuable to business students and the broader startup community. During the conference, York, podcast co-host, had the opportunity to speak with dozens of researchers from around the world who will be featured.

The conference plans to continue to travel and will be in the U.K. in 2026 and return to the U.S. in 2027. “We’re so happy to continue partnering with Darden and Judge on this as well. It’s an incredible opportunity to bring faculty from around the world closer and build great relationships along the way,” York said.

After a five-year hiatus, scholars from around the world came to Boulder and discussed the cross-disciplinary impact of entrepreneurship.

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The Guests Who Inspired Us This Spring

Anonymous — Wed, 01 May 2024 16:25:35 +0000

The Guests Who Inspired Us This Spring Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/01/2024 - 10:25

Anna Bedell (Mktg’25)

Industry leaders and alumni from all over the country came to Leeds to share their wisdom and ignite the next generation of business leaders.

Over a decade ago, Justin Gold tapped into a network of natural products leaders connected to Leeds, who helped him draft a business plan for his nut-butter company, Justin’s. He’s been coming back to inspire students ever since.

Every semester, hundreds of speakers come to Leeds to share their professional experiences with students. They visit classrooms, judge case competitions, coach and mentor students, present at events, sit on panels, lead group discussions, and offer their time and support.

“�鶹��Ժ learn so much from hearing the perspectives of industry leaders,” said Vijay Khatri, the Tandean Rustandy Endowed Dean at Leeds. “It’s essential to their holistic understanding of where business is today and where it’s going.”

Guest speakers are often alumni, board members and Leed’s corporate partners–the best and brightest minds from the Leeds community. The speakers this spring were no different.

“While many believe that the importance of inviting industry speakers lies in networking opportunities, the truth is that it also serves as inspiration,” said Patricia Martinez, a student success coordinator for graduate student services.

“Anyone can shake your hand and add you on Linkedin,” she said, “but taking the time to share their experiences, lessons in failure and advice on growth does far more for our students than an opportune networking event.”

Lessons from leaders

Shannon Blankenship, transfer pricing principal at Deloitte Tax, met with women in the MBA program and shared her experiences building a career in a male-dominated industry.

Shannon Blankenship of Deloitte is on the Leeds Advisory Board and won an alumni award in 2023. In partnership with the Graduate Programs Office and the MBA Women in Business Club, Blankenship revealed her experiences in a male-dominated industry. She and her fellow panelists discussed family, chosen family, mentors and time management while highlighting the advancements women have made in the business world.

Albus Brooks, a real estate professional, visited the building this spring to help instill confidence in students in the MBA Real Estate Principles class. As the vice president at Milender White, Brooks has led change in the real estate industry, onboarding employees of color into a historically white industry. His speech about systemic racism and his thoughts on anti-racism inspired students to make the industry more inclusive and welcoming.

John Cumming spoke to a standing-room-only audience at the Startup & Sandwiches workshop on Feb. 1, hosted by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. The founder and chairman of POWDR, a leading adventure lifestyle company, Cumming shared how his entrepreneurship journey was shaped by his interests. “It’s important in life to be running toward something,” he said.

"Anyone can shake your hand and add you on Linkedin…but taking the time to share their experiences, lessons in failure and advice on growth does far more for our students."

Patricia Martinez, student success coordinator for graduate students

Although he’s not an alumnus, Justin Gold, founder of Justin’s nut butter company, connected with Leeds through Boulder’s entrepreneur community when he was just starting out— and it was the people at Leeds who helped him develop his first business plan. Since then, he comes back to Leeds regularly to help students. This semester, he visited an entrepreneurship class to tell the story of his business, the origins of his idea and the challenges he faced along the way.

More talented leaders who visited this spring included:

Margo Black, Product Management, Forum Real Estate Group

Deanna Bratter, VP Global Head of Sustainability, Crocs

Allie Clifford, Solution Engineer, HubSpot

Eddy Connors, Co-founder, Goodie Bag Food Co.

Chelsea Culter, Sr. Managing Director, Capital Markets, CBRE Denver Office

Diane DeVilbiss Wein, Sr. VP, Global Business Development, Morningstar

Simon Egerton (MRelEst’21), Quantitative Analyst, Piper Sandler & Co.

Janet Foutty, Former CEO, Deloitte

Tyler Huggins, Founder, Meati Foods

John Kadiic, CEO, Parallel Path Digital Marketing

Humeera Khan, Marketing Director for Social Impact, Splunk

Mark Levin, Sustainability and Social Initiative Solution Owner, Apple

Michael Memsic, Founder, Sanitas Brewing

Stephen O’Neal, Principal Solutions Architect, Rocket Software

Blake Ottersberg (Fin’04), Development & Advisory Services, Morgan Creek Ventures

Jim Packer, President, Lionsgate

Julie Pearl, COO, Denver Angels

Ivan Portilla, Former Watson Solution Accelerator Leader of Global Business Services, IBM

Jeannie Renne-Malone, VP, Global Sustainability, ProLogis

Claire Schaffer (Acct’20), Consultant, FTI Consulting

Lindsay Sutula (MBA’09), CEO, Top Fox Marketing

Lucas Thelosen, Head of Product, Data & AI Cloud, Google

Jorge Velasquez, Senior Associate, University Talent Acquisition, KPMG

Ellonda Williams, Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, B Lab

Tim Wojtalik, Senior Advisor and Managing Partner, BSW Wealth Partners

Industry leaders and alumni from all over the country came to Leeds to share their wisdom and ignite the next generation of business leaders.

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Growing Pains

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 18:27:25 +0000

Growing Pains Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/31/2023 - 12:27

Anneli Gray • Photos by Cody Johnston

Passion and persistence aren't enough to make a founder successful. Self-reflection and humility are essential, according to these veteran entrepreneurs.

The middle stage of a startup is the "teenage phase", says Adrian Tuck, former CEO of Uplight. He explains it's like parenting a teenager—introducing self-reliance and structure at just the right time to avoid rejection.

New ventures can fail for a variety of reasons: a lack of funding, a weak business plan, a poor product-market fit, or a lack of understanding that as a business grows, so must its founder.

The transformation of a founder—from someone with an idea to the leader of a business with hundreds of employees, a board of directors, and a CEO—requires an inward journey of personal and professional growth. While the founder’s company scales up, he or she transforms from a doer to manager to leader—each role requiring a very distinct skill set and perspective.

Jeff York, a Leeds professor and academic researcher who has published numerous studies on entrepreneurship and also hosts a podcast on the subject, says, “Most successful startup entrepreneurs are extremely good at listening, extremely good at evolving their ideas based on feedback, and extremely good at bringing other stakeholders in to co-create the venture with them.”

Those skills are great for getting through the startup stage. But the next stages often bring new challenges and demands. “There are very few who can be good at each stage,” says Erick Mueller, executive director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and adjunct professor at Leeds. A lifelong entrepreneur, he’s learned that his sweet spot is the first stage, in which the fast pace and endless possibilities sync perfectly with his strengths.

Mueller says it’s uncommon for founders to have the skill set needed for every phase of a company’s growth. But Adrian Tuck, the former CEO of Uplight, is an exception. “He created the last unicorn in Boulder—he’s brilliant at transitioning through all the stages,” according to Mueller.

The standout

Tuck’s journey to becoming a self-proclaimed “servant leader” began at the age of 18 as an officer in the British army, where he received leadership training and acquired skills and experiences informed by the army’s motto, “Serve to lead.”

“Being a soldier made me an effective entrepreneur. After the army, I made a bet on a startup and became employee number five and eventually learned I liked everything about it,” he says.

“There’s one type of person who’s only happy in one phase or another. The second type of person is really excited to learn and grow through the phases,” Tuck says, “and I try to be the third type, who knows what the next phase looks like and can help everybody get there.”

“I learned that we have to mourn the loss of the things we used to do and be excited about the ways we’re moving forward.”

Adrian Tuck, Former CEO at Uplight

In Uplight’s early stage, Tuck held weekly in-person pizza meetings—a highlight of the week for employees. But when the company began expanding nationally into new cities, the format in which the staff interacted had to change.

“I learned that we have to mourn the loss of the things we used to do and be excited about the ways we’re moving forward,” he says. “My job was to help everybody see the direction and give them the tools they needed—and then get out of the way.”

This is what he has tried to impart to student entrepreneurs at Leeds. For the past 10 years, Tuck has been a consistent contributor as an instructor of the New Venture Creation course, a guest speaker and panelist, a mentor and coach, and a strong supporter of the Deming Center.

Jane Miller is a food industry veteran and has served as CEO for Lily's Sweets (sold to Hershey's), HannahMax Cookie Chips, ProYo, and now, for a second time, Rudi's Rocky Mountain Bakery in Boulder, Colorado.

The ‘founder whisperer’

Following the startup stage, the buildup is considered the most critical time in the life cycle of a business, explains York. A founder is expected to morph into a growth-stage leader, a process builder, and a delegator with emotional intelligence, communication skills, and a grasp of cultural and organizational dynamics.

“Founders have the skills to start the company and garner the initial resources, but they don’t always have the skills to manage a growing company,” says York. “That’s why oftentimes you’ll see, as these companies are transitioning, the board or investors will bring in a CEO who’s a professional manager.”

They’re sometimes known as “founder whisperers.”

Jane Miller, the current CEO of Rudi’s and past CEO of Lily’s Sweets, has over 35 years of executive experience in the food industry and has worked extensively with founders.

“Founders often turn to an outside CEO, someone who has a network of people and understands the fast pace of an entrepreneurial environment but also understands how to take a founder’s vision and make it bigger and broader and scale it,” says Miller.

However, it’s not always a match made in heaven, as founders and operators both want to be in charge. “I think that might be one of the hardest kinds of transitions for founders—going from doing everything by themselves to turning the keys over to an operator. And the operator may too quickly dismiss the founder with the attitude of ‘Thanks for creating this great brand—I’ve got it from here.’”

“The most important part is continued evolution in one’s own leadership journey.”

Erick Mueller, Executive Director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and Adjunct Professor at Leeds

It’s similar to a marriage, Miller says. “It’s about getting two people to really figure out how to work with one another and respect each other’s skills. Honest communication about goals is critical.”

Miller has been actively involved at Leeds for over 15 years, sharing her wealth of experience with both student entrepreneurs and women graduate students. She also serves on the Leeds Advisory Board.

The founder leader

Scaleup, defined as late-stage expansion, is the final stage, making human-centric skills even more important as the founder becomes a leader at scale. If the management infrastructure and the right people are in place, a founder has the potential to thrive in this stage. By communicating a clear vision and strategy, he or she can set the overall direction and lead the company to success.

This is where one’s leadership style truly emerges.

“I spent time examining what type of leader I was, and I thought of myself as a fairly simple leader whose job is to help everybody see the direction and support them,” says Tuck. “I like to think of myself as empathetic and humble. And I like this concept of ‘servant leadership,’ the idea that my job as a leader is to make other people better.”

When it comes to growing a company, entrepreneurs who have acknowledged their strengths and limitations, have developed the humility to reject a lone-wolf mindset, and are willing to partner with others with complementary strengths have done the inner work needed to position themselves for success.

“The most important part,” says Mueller, “is continued evolution in one’s own leadership journey.”

Passion and persistence aren't enough to make a founder successful. Self-reflection and humility are essential, according to these veteran entrepreneurs.

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Leeds Workshop Highlights Teaching Innovations

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:34:37 +0000

Leeds Workshop Highlights Teaching Innovations Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/17/2023 - 10:34

Cutting-edge teaching practices took center stage during the Leeds School of Business Innovative Teaching Award Workshop earlier this month.

Hosted for faculty in the hopes of inspiring dialogue, the workshop was led by Kai Larsen, professor of information systems; Jeff York, associate dean for strategic initiatives and professor of strategy and entrepreneurship; Brad Werner, teaching assistant professor in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Operations division and teaching director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship; Ryan Lewis, assistant professor of finance; and Brian Waters, assistant professor of finance.

Larsen won the inaugural David B. Balkin and Rosalind and Chester Barnow Endowed Innovative Teaching Award last spring for his Simplyx interactive learning courseware and supporting materials. York, Werner, Lewis and Waters were finalists for the award, which was established to recognize and reward faculty who develop and operationalize innovative teaching practices that include producing revelatory and useful teaching knowledge by Leeds professor of management David Balkin.

Winners and finalists were required to present their innovative methods to the rest of the Leeds faculty “and encourage them to use it in their own courses,” Balkin said.

“Being able to encourage and reward innovations in teaching is not only beneficial to faculty, but also to students, who are able to learn in a more engaging way,” he explained.

The award and workshop aren’t the only ways Leeds aims to foster and recognize outstanding teaching. The Joseph L. Frascona Teaching Excellence Award is presented annually by students to a Leeds professor who is a strong mentor, encourages intellectual development and creates lasting impact beyond the classroom. Faculty are also supported by committees and initiatives at both the campus and school level, including Leeds teaching excellence and teaching mentors committees as well as the Teaching Excellence Speaker Series.

Cutting-edge teaching practices took center stage during the Leeds School of Business Innovative Teaching Award Workshop earlier this month.

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Classroom Flip Offers �鶹��Ժ Tighter Grip on Business Analytics

Anonymous — Tue, 09 May 2023 20:29:19 +0000

Classroom Flip Offers �鶹��Ժ Tighter Grip on Business Analytics Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/09/2023 - 14:29

To prepare students to take on technical challenges at work, Kai Larsen sought an innovation of his own. That earned him Leeds’ first award for teaching innovation.

Kai Larsen in the atrium of the Rustandy Building. He was selected as the first winner of a Leeds teaching innovation award designed to both improve student learning and share new ideas among business faculty. Larsen and a teaching assistant created a tool, website and other materials to improve his Business Analytics course. Below are Peter Kinder, Larsen’s TA, and David Balkin, who funded the award.

Ask someone who’s both taken and helped taught it: The Business Analytics course has a reputation for being among the most difficult at the Leeds School of Business.

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For instance, a culminating experiences in the course involves sitting for the Alteryx Core Certification Test, administered to industry professionals who are seeking licensing on the Alteryx platform. Only about one in four students in the class passed the exam on their first try.

Professor Kai Larsen, who was teaching the course, saw an opportunity to innovate—and to involve his students in that process.

“Kai goes above and beyond in order to help his students succeed,” said Peter Kinder (Fin, InfoMgmt; Math, Stat’23), who took the course and helped administer it as a teaching assistant. “To pass the core certification, you really had to be a go getter, someone willing to find materials on your own and understand that. Kai wanted to build something that could make it easier for students to understand the material and be successful.”

Larsen and Kinder’s success in re-envisioning the course to make it more accessible—and how they increased the pass rate for that industry exam to 80 percent, without teaching to the test—is why Larsen became the first winner of the David B. Balkin and Rosalind and Chester Barnow Endowed Innovative Teaching Award.

An emphasis on teaching

When you consider everything a business school professor has to do in the course of his or her work—service appointments, research and publications, mentorship, conferences, and so on—teaching can sometimes feel like an afterthought, and it’s uncommon for faculty to discuss best practices or develop new ideas to master their craft, said David Balkin, a professor of management at Leeds, who funded the award.

“Teaching is something we do by ourselves, that we know a lot about, but don’t share with anyone,” he said.

“Being able to encourage and reward innovations in teaching is not only beneficial to faculty, but also to students, who are able to learn in a more engaging way.”

Professor David Balkin

That was the impetus behind creating the endowed award, which encourages and rewards teaching innovation—and requires winners and finalists to present their innovative methods to the rest of the Leeds faculty “and encourage them to use it in their own courses,” Balkin said.

A focus on teaching innovation

Teaching innovation is regularly celebrated in medical and engineering schools, but less so in business education, and there are few requirements for broadly sharing innovative methods, he said: “Being able to encourage and reward innovations in teaching is not only beneficial to faculty, but also to students, who are able to learn in a more engaging way.”

Student engagement was at the core of the innovation that got Larsen the award. A celebrated thought leader in analytics, Larsen said it’s a challenge to present technical material to business students.

“A lot of analytics comes out of math,” Larsen said. “And you learn math by doing lots of problems. One of the realizations I had is that there isn’t enough time in the classroom for students to learn analytics at a deeper level.”

If all Larsen did was flip his classroom so that students did analytics problems at home, then devoted class periods to enrichment and application, that would be notable, but not exactly innovative. What he did instead was work with Kinder to build a tool, called Simplyx, from scratch. It’s essentially a version of the Alteryx platform, modified to allow students to work on and submit problems—individually or in groups—and chart their progress while providing feedback in instances where they got the wrong answers.

MORE: Meet the first college student to win global Alteryx Grand Prix

And because it’s a self-guided experience for students, Larsen and Kinder had to ensure there was a degree of logic baked in to when new tools are introduced, tested and mastered.

“We developed this set of roughly 150 problems, ranging from easy to advanced, and organized them into a belt system, if you picture karate belts,” Larsen said. “So the white belt is the easier set of problems to solve, with a simpler set of tools that you have to understand before you can move on to the yellow belt, which incorporates the knowledge earned in the white belt, and so on.”

The whole class is organized around this belt system, where the procedural knowledge of how to do a task precedes the conceptual and theoretical knowledge.

Along with Simplyx, there’s a website Larsen and Kinder created to track student progress through real-time analytics and the Simplyx Check software that allows students to upload completed problems to the cloud for evaluation. They also wrote a guidebook to help users master Simplyx, and have enlisted graduates of the course to hold office hours for students seeking help.

Improved student outcomes

“The idea here is not just that we’re improving student learning,” Larsen said. “As a professor tracks the students’ progress, he or she can see where students are struggling, and re-evaluate the class structure and their own methods to help them become better teachers.”

“That’s something I like about how we developed this system,” Balkin said. “Kai and I may work in different areas, but I know there’s something in his approach that can make me a better teacher, too, and I look forward to learning what that might be.”

The teaching award is designated for faculty only—so Kinder cannot be an official winner, though Larsen plans to share the cash prize with his protégé, as “I could have done none of this without him.” A share of the cash prize will be helpful to Kinder as he begins his graduate studies—but more than that, the experience gave him some direction for his future plans.

“Having the experience of working with Kai and building this software has really warmed me to the idea of starting my own business,” Kinder said. “This project has been a valuable small-business experiment, as we’ve reached out to other professors and, hopefully, might expand this to other universities.”

Why Leeds Faculty research MS in Business Analytics

Is there a way to make one of Leeds’ difficult analytics classes more accessible? For Kai Larsen, the answer was analytics.

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‘We Thought This Was the Best Way to Honor Him’: Friends Share Story Behind a Scholarship Emphasizing Entrepreneurship

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 18:47:53 +0000

‘We Thought This Was the Best Way to Honor Him’: Friends Share Story Behind a Scholarship Emphasizing Entrepreneurship Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/18/2023 - 12:47

The Greer Scholarship memorializes an alumnus whose creativity and passion left a deep impression on campus, at work and among pals.

The Jonathan Greer Memorial Scholarship is a way for the friends and family of Greer, left, to honor his values and offer financial support to students who shared his interest in entrepreneurship and enthusiasm for CU Boulder and its community. Pictured with Greer are, from left, Kevin Morse, Ben Paull and Paul DeRemer, his friends and fellow Leeds alumni.

When you ask Paul DeRemer for stories about his friend Jonathan Greer, he’s quick to bring up a long weekend skiing with his best friends from college.

“It was this fun moment of time maybe 10 years out of college, just before we all started having kids,” said DeRemer (Fin’02), now founder and principal consultant of New York-based Kaleidoscope Advisory. “I still keep a picture of it here to remember it.”

The memory is important because one of the friends in that photo, Jonathan Greer (Bus’03), died unexpectedly at 38. Some of his closest friends—including DeRemer and Ben Paull (Acct, Fin’03)—and his family created and funded the Jonathan Greer Memorial Endowed Scholarship Fund to honor their friend’s passion for CU Boulder, interest in entrepreneurship and love for others.

“Jonathan was one of the most creative people out there,” said Paull, chief financial officer of Ribbit Capital. “He was always thinking about what ideas would actually impact and change the world. We thought this was the best way to honor him while doing something he would feel great about—being remembered in a way that’s not just about him, but about helping others, which was really who he was.”

A catalyst ‘to take a risk and build something’

The Greer scholarship has been awarded annually since 2020 to a Leeds student interested in entrepreneurship. While Greer was not a founder, he brought an entrepreneurial approach to solving problems in finance; DeRemer thought it would be “amazing” to see a Leeds student embrace the same perspective his friend brought to the business world.

“It would be great if, ultimately, this gift was a sort of catalyst to allow someone to take a risk and build something,” he said.

Talk with Greer’s friends and you quickly get a sense of him and his gregarious personality, from being a baseball coach and family man to a Green Bay Packers devotee. Paull and DeRemer shared laughs as they recalled the ski trip, which coincided with the Packers’ trip to the Super Bowl. They watched it at the hotel, surrounded by Steelers fans.

Throughout the first half, Paull recalled, hotel guests were inching their chairs further from the group as Greer loudly cheered the team on.

“Every year, we’ll meet someone who will receive this scholarship, carry it forward and be touched by Jonathan in some small way.”

Paul DeRemer (Fin’02)

“Jonathan brought so much love and passion to whatever we did,” DeRemer said. “He always brought a huge personality to everything he did.”

Knowing some of Greer’s story is what makes earning this scholarship so special. Tasha Smith (Strat, Entrep’23), this year’s recipient, said she enjoyed the opportunity to meet with DeRemer and Paull to understand the person whose memory the gift honors.

“It was not only a chance to understand why they created this scholarship, but also to get a little bit of career advice to help me in the future,” said Smith, who’s exploring a range of job possibilities in project management, marketing and user experience.

A recipient who embodies Greer’s values

Many students say scholarships offer some freedom from working, allowing them to more closely focus on classes or extracurriculars. DeRemer, for instance, said scholarships offered him the opportunity to work with Paull and restart a finance club at CU, which both men called a formative experience. Smith, however, is interning with Mission Zero and working at the CU Environmental Center while carrying a full load of extracurriculars, including president of CU Boulder’s chapter of The Women’s Network.

“In Tasha’s case, I remember leaving our discussion with her and thinking, ‘Wow, I don’t think I was doing half that much stuff when I was at CU,’” Paull said. “It was touching to hear how seriously she was taking this opportunity.”

Scholarship winners, he added, “are always excited to hear about Jonathan. It’s amazing to hear their stories and how we can help them—but in a way they’re living through him, too.”

Smith doesn’t consider herself an entrepreneur—though if you ask her, she’ll tell you her dream job would be to blend her interests in business and art to create her own fashion line. But she’s had to think like one in developing The Women’s Network. It’s the only Colorado chapter among 150 national chapters; she cherishes the opportunity to help women at CU develop career-related skills and to connect them with female professionals across the country.

“I’m really grateful for how the scholarship supports me in taking on responsibilities like The Women’s Network or the Climate Action Expo, which I’m also a part of,” she said. “Jonathan sounds like he was an amazing person, and getting the opportunity to honor his memory is very special to me.”

For DeRemer, that’s what it’s all about.

“Scholarships create this living thing. Each year, into perpetuity, people who earn this scholarship will know his name,” he said. “So every year, we’ll meet someone who will receive this scholarship, carry it forward and be touched by Jonathan in some small way. For us to be a part of that, and to see his legacy go out there into the world, means we’ll never forget him.”

Why Leeds Supporting scholarships Forever Buffs Network

The Jonathan Greer Memorial Scholarship is a way for the friends of Greer, who died unexpectedly, to help Leeds students who share his vision and values.

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Leeds Opens New Studio to Meet Growing Demand for Video Instruction

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Leeds Opens New Studio to Meet Growing Demand for Video Instruction Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/02/2023 - 00:00

Technology builds on school’s commitment to better distance-learning experiences and more efficient use of classroom time.

A videographer checks his equipment as Liu Liu, an assistant professor of marketing, records a video for the Modern Artificial Intelligence course she teaches in the business analytics master’s program at Leeds. The school’s new studio space gives faculty access to professionals and state-of-the-art tools to create high-quality videos for distance learning programs.

While the pandemic made Zoom ubiquitous, businesses already were experimenting with virtual meetings, hybrid work and telecommuting when the world went into lockdown in early 2020.

Business schools, on the other hand, had to quickly build virtual experiences and recreate a high-quality learning experience for scattered classes of students. And it wasn’t just a matter of finding ways to encourage collaboration among remote classmates—it was making do with substandard equipment, oftentimes in awkward places, like a professor’s kitchen while children cavorted in the background.

At the Leeds School of Business, though, the days of cat filters and audio anomalies are over. The school recently cut the ribbon on a state-of-the-art studio space in the Koelbel Building that’s changing how faculty deliver courses and engage with students—even those courses that are delivered in a traditional onsite classroom. Along with higher-quality content, the studio offers improved editing capabilities and the opportunity for more creative recording techniques.

“What the new studio is able to do is create these really high-quality videos that students can watch before a class to enrich their experience,” said Tracy Jennings, a teaching professor at Leeds and faculty director for distance and online education. “That opens up classes for more discussion and more kind of active learning that are more effective than just lecturing.”

A game-changer for hybrid courses

That’s how Lawrence Williams, an associate professor of marketing at Leeds, uses video to supplement the hybrid MBA and distance-learning courses he teaches. Time in class, he said, can focus on deeper engagement with the material, through more specific questions or additional opportunities for students to collaborate on applied, project-based work.

“The studio has been a godsend, mainly because of the talent of the staff,” Williams said, noting that he’s able to record in minutes what took him hours to assemble during the pandemic. “It helps me focus more time and energy on updating the content and structure of the class, instead of wrestling with video editing software.”

The studio is staffed by professionals who ensure the recording experience is comfortable and seamless. The space is equipped with state-of-the-art technology—including a green screen built as a stretched “cyc wall” that creates a more immersive watching experience, and an all-in-one tricaster system that helps speed video production without sacrificing quality.

For Jennings, the studio and the high-quality content it enables aren’t the full story, though. Her previous career was in user experience design and product development at IBM and US West, which has helped her bring a consistent look to the Canvas course design used in graduate programs, including the executive MBA, hybrid MBA, and master’s in business analytics.

“Since the faculty teaching in these programs use the same Canvas course design, students don’t struggle to find any course materials, including videos,” she said.

For Kristi Ryujin, well-organized content is as important as well-created content.

“One of the things we continue to hear from our students it that what we’re doing is making it easier for them to learn and be successful,” said Ryujin, associate dean for the graduate division and special assistant to the dean for faculty diversity, equity and inclusion. “The more frustrated students get in navigating Canvas, or trying to follow along on a low-quality video, the less time and energy they have to focus on what they want to learn.”

Showcasing world-class Leeds faculty

Honoring excellence

Leeds’ commitment to high-quality video as a crucial component of an educational experience won two excellence awards in the fall from the Brandon Hall Group, a global research and analyst firm. Leeds won awards for best use of video in learning and best advance in custom content, both from its executive MBA program.

Ryujin’s first exposure to a university studio came as a result of some consulting work she was doing. What impressed her most wasn’t the bells and whistles, but the seamlessness of the experience for faculty and the possibilities it represented for students, especially those who have different learning styles.

“The studio gives us a space that really showcases our world-class faculty,” she said. “We’re making it easy for the faculty to embrace this technology, and have the confidence that their videos will be clean and help make learning easier for their students.”

Part of making learning easier is accommodating different learning styles, which the studio helps make possible. That could mean slowing down the audio to improve comprehension, embedding videos and charts for visual learners—even just rewinding a particularly technical discussion to better absorb the material. For Williams, that’s a key benefit to high-quality video.

“It gives students control over the rate and pace of their lecture consumption,” he said, such as taking breaks when they need time to digest a complicated idea. “And as they are working on projects, they can refer back, not only to their notes, but to the actual lecture content most relevant to their current concerns.”

He also noted that the tools and guidance available in the studio help create more engaging video, which can help students retain what they learn. For Jennings, that’s a key selling point of the studio’s value to Leeds.

“Even as school has returned toward mostly face-to-face learning, there’s pressure to have videos available for offline enrichment and distance-learning opportunities,” Jennings said. “We’re getting better at it, and the new studio is really taking us to the next level.”

Why Leeds Hybrid MBA Executive education

The new space is giving world-class faculty the tools—and expertise—needed to create top-quality content that improves learning.

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Deming Center Offers Dose of Innovation for the ‘Startup Nation’

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 17:26:06 +0000

Deming Center Offers Dose of Innovation for the ‘Startup Nation’ Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/15/2022 - 10:26

Entrepreneurship experts visited Israel to help scientists and researchers to recognize breakthrough ideas. 

Experts from Leeds' Deming Center for Entrepreneurship visited the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, to help researchers and scientists better understand the business applications of breakthrough discoveries. From left, Brad Werner, Sharon Fireman and Erick Mueller at the Weizmann workshop. Below right are scenes from workshop sessions being led by Mueller and Fireman.

If you’re in business, the word “entrepreneurship” has many associations—founders, startups, visionaries, people who look at problems differently and find solutions in improbable places.

If you are more technically oriented, “entrepreneurship” may not be in your vocabulary at all.

And for Erick Mueller, executive director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business, that’s a problem, because technical professionals are often responsible for the kinds of innovations that can be game-changers in business.

“Teaching scientists and researchers how to better recognize and evaluate ideas from an entrepreneurship lens offers huge potential for positive impact—whether that’s a breakthrough medicine, a cure to a horrible disease or better security protocols to keep kids safe online,” Mueller said.

That’s what brought the Deming Center to the Weizmann Institute of Science for a workshop in entrepreneurial thinking for staff scientists at the Rehovot, Israel, research university.

MORE: Inside Deming's Rural Entrepreneurship Workshop series

“Bringing that innovation and entrepreneurship lens to scientists is maybe not the first community that comes to mind when thinking of our workshop participants,” said Mueller, who designed the Idea to Action with his Deming Center colleague, Brad Werner. “But there’s so much potential for these researchers to create impact that truly changes the world for the better.”

High potential for impactful business activity

Mueller and Werner were tasked with teaching the career researchers at Weizmann’s BINA unit—short for Bridge-Innovate-Nurture-Advance—the business side of the life-altering discoveries they already make, hoping these scientists will become more adept at recognizing the big ideas that can impact humanity, and developing them into life-changing applications.

With its high ratio of entrepreneurs and venture capital in proportion to the population, Israel is known in the tech world as “the startup nation,” making it an ideal environment to plant the CU Deming flag and offer scientists ways to identify entrepreneurial opportunities and realize their technological potential.

“From my experience, I know ventures have the highest chance of success when you have a talented group of business as well as technical leaders,” Mueller says. “You can’t have a successful venture without those two disciplines. The cross-disciplinary nature of business creation always results in a greater chance of success.”

“Teaching scientists and researchers how to better recognize and evaluate ideas from an entrepreneurship lens offers huge potential for positive impact.”

Erick Mueller, executive director, Deming Center for Entrepreneurship

Weizmann is mentioned alongside schools like Harvard and MIT when it comes to research, but the workshop “aimed to shift our focus from the basic science that we do in the lab towards understanding how to take our unique idea and turn it into a product,” said Gili Ben Nissan, an associate staff scientist in Weizmann’s biomolecular sciences department. “We learned the various aspects of commercialization, and we were inspired to fly with our imagination to higher grounds and realize that if we have a good idea and the ambition to make a difference, it is possible.”

That’s exactly what Sharon Fireman, who heads BINA’s translational research and innovation unit, was looking for in partnering with Deming. BINA, she said, wants to “assist the staff scientists in expanding their knowledge in this field, expose them to basic concepts in the industry and enable them to create a network that allows collaborating on new innovative projects.”

At Deming, that’s all in a day’s work.

“Entrepreneurship is a mindset, not just a job description,” Mueller said. “By definition, entrepreneurship is solving problems in the world and empowering people to have a great life.”

Why Leeds Deming Center for Entrepreneurship Leeds Centers of Excellence

The Deming Center brought its expertise to scientists and researchers who don't always recognize the commercial applications of their important discoveries.

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When it Comes to Your LinkedIn Profile, a Selfie Won't Cut it

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 15:40:04 +0000

When it Comes to Your LinkedIn Profile, a Selfie Won't Cut it Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 11/05/2022 - 09:40

Leeds is Colorado’s first business school to offer professional headshot service on demand to its students.

Business students get plenty of coaching on writing an engaging cover letter, perfecting a résumé and presenting themselves on LinkedIn.

But for recruiters, a picture is still worth a thousand words—and schools don’t devote the same resources to helping students build a headshot that will resonate with hiring managers.

To help counter that, this fall, the Leeds School of Business unveiled a kiosk that allows students to get free, top-quality headshots to help tell their professional stories on LinkedIn and elsewhere. It’s the first business school in Colorado to offer its students this service.

“Having a professional headshot makes you stand out from other candidates, especially if you’re a college student looking for that first role,” said Amanda Hansen, director of the Career Development Office at Leeds.

Not just for job seekers

A survey from Jobvite found more than 40 percent of recruiters said they formed a first impression from candidate photos; Hansen said she even encourages first-year students to get a quality headshot, as most start meeting with recruiters—or networking with alumni—from the start.

“An updated headshot elevates their professionalism when they come into the business school in a way their senior portrait from high school does not,” she said.

Unlike a traditional photography studio, the Iris Booth doesn’t require an appointment and is free to use—but like a studio, the booth is beautifully lit, provides high-resolution photos and even gives subjects tips, like, “Tilt your chin down,” or “Move closer to the camera.”

How it works

The Iris Booth requires no appointment to get a headshot taken. Visit the Career Development Office in Koelbel 201 to use the space. �鶹��Ժ are encouraged to dress professionally to ensure they get a photo that will work well on LinkedIn and other career-oriented platforms.

“The person who designed it, Sue Siri, was a professional photographer for 25 years,” said Victor Fisher, who calls himself a “co-conspirator” behind the company. “She had an RFP to write a proposal for 3,000 graduate photos at a university. But then we thought, ‘This is the selfie generation. What if we just set up a studio and let them take their own photos, rather than having them spend several hundred dollars for a professional portrait?’”

The Iris Booth offers touch-up and editing tools that extend beyond most smartphone selfies, such as brightening teeth and fixing flyaway hairs. �鶹��Ժ also can take as many photos as they like before they come up with a final version, which is sent via email. And if they don’t get it right the first time, students are welcome to return—if the Career Development Office is open, so is the Iris Booth.

Finally, for students whose wardrobe could use some post-pandemic updating, Hansen said Ralphie’s Closet—a professional business clothing swap run for, and by, Leeds students—is located in the same suite as the booth. It’s available to all students.

Why Leeds Career Services Leeds Grad Programs

No, that Instagram snap you love isn't how you want to lead with employers.

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