Promoting a culture of entrepreneurialism and support for research and program development

Entrepreneurs are able to see market opportunities and seize them. Moreover, they are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional and financial risk to pursue these opportunities. Our School strives to encourage such entrepreneurs in the areas of research and program development by creating a culture of entrepreneurialism. To do so, we recognize that we must support faculty, program directors and research professors in creatively seeking out potential markets for the results of their research and program developments. In addition, the School must be prepared to take risks and provide resources – human, financial and technological, as well as space – to ensure that good ideas for marketable knowledge and products will be nurtured and given a chance to develop. Our School will rise to this challenge by developing and supporting a culture of creativity, opportunism and strategic risk-taking among our faculty, students and staff.

Examples

	The Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change program is expanding by offering an innovative new path toward its certificate in strategic change management. Beginning in 2009, students are pursuing the certificate via a model that combines distance learning with periodic on-campus sessions.
	The Center for Talent Development (CTD) strategically offers programs in sites around the Chicago area, expanding its reach to new communities. In addition to the Northwestern Evanston campus programs, CTD has a Saturday Enrichment Program site in Naperville, a new site in Palatine and explorations underway for sites to launch in the Chicago south suburbs and Milwaukee.
	Working with professor Dan McAdams, SESP web developer Mark Swindle designed a web site around McAdams’s book The Redemptive Self. Since the book has great appeal for non-academic audiences, the goal of the interactive web site is to convey the book’s concept, clarify its cultural relevance and provide access to its entire contents. In focusing on virtual access to the book, the site is innovative in promoting McAdams’s work as well as the School.