University of Wisconsin students hoping to develop entrepreneurial skills can look to a center on campus that seeks to boost innovations from students.
The University of Wisconsin’s Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship hones skill sets and ideas of students seeking entrepreneurial education and guidance, John Surdyk, INSITE director, said.
Emphasizing an interdisciplinary setting, the center devotes its time to instilling an awareness of what the process of starting a business entails and providing students with the skills they will need as entrepreneurs, he said.
UW is not the only campus that has an initiative of this nature, Surdyk said.
“We spend a lot of time trying to help students develop their ability to generate promising ideas,” Surdyk said. “We’ve actually incorporated in many of our classes techniques and exercises that would help to improve an individual student’s ability to develop ideas on their own, but also techniques that could improve group creativity.”
INSITE also offers the Burrill competition, Surdyk said. Although there is a winner, the goal of the contest is for students to receive feedback from alumni and business leaders so they can use those insights to become more competitive in the entrepreneurship arena, he said.
INSITE compiles a list of the entrepreneurial activities happening across campus for more guidance and to make itself readily available to students, Russ Coff, faculty director, said.
“We usually get about forty to fifty teams of students that develop business plans, and we have judges from the business community come in who are part of local venture capital companies and help students develop them,” Coff said.
Surdyk discussed one team that did poorly in the competition because they had a business but no plan to increase growth. After interviewing judges, continuing to work on the business and using the feedback in their new plan, the team came back a second year and won, Surdyk said.
That same team went on to start EatStreet, a Madison-based business that has since expanded to more than 100 cities nationwide, he said.
Pinpointing an exact number of INSITE students is difficult as many of their programs operate in partnership with others on campus, Surdyk said. There are around 1,300 to 1,400 students who live in the Entrepreneurship Learning Community in Sellery Hall, participate in the Burrill competition and attend entrepreneurial classes offered through the center, he said.
The large growth of INSITE across campus in such a short period of time reflects the success the initiative is starting to see, as its expansion means more students are interested in contributing, Surdyk said.
“It’s just great,” Surdyk said. “I’m thankful to be able to be a part of providing these opportunities to students. That’s why I come in here everyday.”
