Conferences

  		 
USASBE 2010 Pre-Conference Sessions
 
 
We are pleased to announce a number of pre-conference sessions, which will take place on Thursday, January 14, 2010. You can register for pre-conference sessions as part of the online conference registration process. Click here for Conference registration information.
  
 
 
Addressing the Biggest Small Business Problems: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice through a Collaborative Forum
Presenters: Marty Mattare, Frostburg State University; Whitney Peake, Murray State University; Joanne Pratt, Joanne H. Pratt Associates; Michael Wilcox, University of Tennessee; Michelle Proctor, TN Business Enterprise Resources Office; Beth Phillips, Institute for Public Service; Jack Jurgens, Tennessee SCORE; John Ordung, SBDC; Claudette Carter, SBA
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (1:00PM -5:00PM)
  
Description: Recently, several scholars have argued that research is not sufficiently connected to or integrated into practice. As researchers, it is often difficult to pinpoint the direct, practical problems our practitioner counterparts face as they assist entrepreneurs and small business owners in their local communities. Difficulty in identifying these issues has often led to a gap between research presented in academic journals and practitioner research needs. As the title of the workshop proposal suggests, the primary objective of the workshop is to provide an opportunity for small business practitioners to reveal the most pressing problems they currently face and their perceptions of existing opportunities for academics to provide practical research which would better assist them in serving their target audience. In addition to heightening researchers’ awareness of practitioners’ research needs, research teams will be created after the panel discussion to further elaborate on and explore these problems. Such interaction is intended to both foster collaboration across universities and disciplines and provide opportunities for future submissions to the small business section of USASBE. One of the objectives set by the small business section for the current year was to create an online journal. A collaborative forum like the one proposed would likely provide practitioner-related pieces for the online journal of the small business section.
  
Much literature may be found that discusses bridging the gap between research and practice. The core argument of this body of literature maintains that, in order to be useful, research must be accessible and understandable to practitioners. Usefulness, however, is a relative term and may mean different things to different people, especially between those in academia and those in practice. Usefulness could be defined as depending, at least in part, on how much the perspectives of organization members (practitioners) are included in the research process and whether those research results are incorporated operationally. As our research models and techniques have become more sophisticated, they have become increasingly less oriented to solving practical problems
  
Our own perspectives, as practitioners and researchers, bear out what our scholar peers are saying. This workshop seeks to help address bridging the research practice gap and is proposed to create a forum where practitioners and scholars can discuss research needs and create opportunities for further collaboration.
 
 
Assessing the Performance of Entrepreneurship Programs: Best Practices, Key Challenges, and the Road Ahead
Presenters: Alex F. DeNoble, San Diego State University; Michael H. Morris, Oklahoma State University
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (1:00PM -5:00PM)
  
Description: How do we know if our entrepreneurship programs are working? Is it enough to track business start ups, or is this even a relevant metric?  As we continue to design and implement new programs in entrepreneurship at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, it is increasingly important that we establish relevant and measurable student learning outcomes and adopt meaningful protocols to effectively assess performance. Developing and implementing a viable assessment approach is not only important to donors and program stakeholders, but is a key challenge for schools working to establish and/or maintain AACSB accreditation. This workshop is designed to explore the issues related to developing a set of best practices for establishing and implementing a fair assessment plan. Issues covered in this pre-conference will focus on:
  • Developing student learning outcomes both at the programmatic level and at the individual course level
  • Designing assessment protocols for measuring student progress relative to these learning outcomes
  • Establishing effective closing the loop activities.
During this workshop we will hear from entrepreneurship faculty members who have taken steps to establish quality assessment practices in their programs. We will assess best practices, and identify the biggest challenges.  Based on interactive discussion with those attending, we will explore approaches to building upon these best practices and overcoming these obstacles.
 
 
Building a Regional Entrepreneurial Pathway
Presenters: Timothy M. Stearns, California State University; Genelle Taylor, Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Marianne Dunklin, Fresno City College 
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (1:00PM -5:00PM)
  
Description: Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in economic development. Many regions lack a strong base of entrepreneurial activity that would assist in wealth generation. Most commonly, those regions are found to have fewer institutions of higher education with entrepreneurship programs unable to reach a large segment of the population. Higher education has long been considered a significant asset for regional economic development.  Successful regional economic development should be dependent upon the educational and training programs that serve each region’s unique strengths and goals.
   
The California Central Valley is a region covering over 27,000 square miles of mostly agricultural land with a population of 3 million. With a large California State University campus at its center, only a handful of small colleges exist with a new University of California campus in launch mode. Impacting the region with education and programs in entrepreneurship has been a challenge based on reach. In 2007, the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at California State University, Fresno with support from the Coleman Foundation launched an innovative approach to solve this problem. Creating an “Entrepreneurial Pathway”, ten community college campuses were organized into a collaborative group with the purpose of delivering entrepreneurial education and fostering entrepreneurial activity across the region.
   
Creating a common curriculum, building collaborative programs, and developing multi-campus initiatives, entrepreneurship is now extending to segments of the population that previously had little or no access. Coupled with an initiative to create high school level programs articulated to the community colleges has furthered the goals of the Pathway.
  
In this workshop, the facilitators will provide an overview of the Pathway, its methods of implementation, the challenges and successes that have been achieved, and a perspective on how the Pathway can be replicated in other regions will be presented. Upon completing the workshop, attendees will:
  • Be able to identify opportunities to collaborate with regional four year and 2 year colleges.
  • Understand the process of course articulation agreements between universities.
  • Find and mentor a champion on a community college campus to foster and support entrepreneurship education.
Build relationships with professional organizations that will support efforts in nurturing an Entrepreneurial Pathway in their region.
 
 
Creativity and Innovation for Corporate Entrepreneurship
Presenters: Michael G. Goldsby, Ball State University; Jeffrey S. Hornsby, Kansas State University
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (1:00PM -5:00PM)
  
Description: Finding ideas for new products and services may be one of the hardest challenges a manager faces today; however, it is critically important that creativity and innovation become the backbone of a company’s operations. Lower wages, easily accessible communication networks, and enhanced supply chain management allow competitors around the world to compete against more well-known companies.  The deciding factor in today’s hypercompetitive markets is creatively offering better products and services that serve customers in new ways.  Unfortunately, many managers have been educated and trained to increase the efficiency of doing what has been successful in the past.  Additionally, education is often based on getting “the” right answer, instead of learning to work with the ambiguity and uncertainty found in innovative activities. When better products come out by entrepreneurial startups and more innovative competitors, the established company has difficulties meeting the new challenges. A big reason for this is the inertia found in established companies.  Hit with deadlines and performance goals, managers often focus on meeting production and shipping deadlines and generating revenues, at the expense of developing new markets. Thinking about new products and services becomes a sideline activity, but it is innovative products and services that likely got the company where it is today.  Thus, managers must regain the entrepreneurial edge by being more creative.

The entrepreneurial process inside an organization is guided by an entrepreneur who has identified a unique, new opportunity or idea, as well as the self-discipline and perseverance to commercialize the new opportunity or idea.  The origin of the new opportunity or idea is the beginning of the entrepreneurship process, and creative thinking on the part of the entrepreneur is the foundation of the birth of the idea.
  
The crucial component is the entrepreneur who has a vision of a new way of doing things or a unique insight.  The entrepreneurial process begins with discovering a new problem to be solved or a new opportunity to be capitalized on resulting from the personal creativity of individual workers and managers.  Later, the successful entrepreneur creates a solution to the problem or opportunity in the form of a new service or product.  Creativity brings about the entrepreneurial process.
   
In this workshop, we explain what creativity is and isn’t, the elements that support creative activity, the four phases of the creative process, and areas where people can focus their creativity.  In the process, you will learn how your brain comes up with new ideas, and what steps you can take to develop your own and your employees’ and students’ creativity.  We also provide exercises for helping academics and managers find ideas for new businesses.
 
 
Effective Teaching Techniques for Family Business Management Courses
Presenters: Roland Kidwell, University of Wyoming; Frank Hoy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Ernesto Poza, Thunderbird University; Greg McCann, Stetson University
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (8:00AM -Noon)
  
Description: Techniques to effectively teach family business courses, as well as tips on a variety of teaching methods/strategies such as case study analysis and sample syllabi. Ernesto Poza, author of Family Business, 3rd Edition (Cengage, 2010), and Frank Hoy, co-author of Entrepreneurial Family Firms (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010), will conduct a preconference workshop focused on teaching family business.  This interactive half-day session will address developing and implementing stand-alone family business courses in the academic curriculum as well as infusing family business subject matter into existing courses.  Because family business is inherently multidisciplinary, the workshop assumes instructors may be based in any discipline across a campus. The workshop organizers will draw on their own experiences in teaching in university settings, conducting continuing education training, and engaging in consultation with family owned and managed firms. 
  
Although the workshop will provide some background regarding the evolution of family business education and address basic course content such as governance, succession, estate planning, etc., the focus will be on pedagogical techniques.  Who are the likely audiences for family business education?  What do they seek from educational forums?  How does the instructor communicate across generations, size categories, industries, gender, cultural background, family versus non-family participants, and other possible variations among those enrolled?  There will be demonstrations of various techniques, including the use of videos, role playing, and teambuilding exercises.  We anticipate that many of the attendees will have taught family business at some point in their careers.  That will enable us to recruit a panel of experts from the registrants who can share their experiences and engage the audience in discussion. The organizers will summarize highlights of the workshop, draw conclusions and make recommendations, which will subsequently be delivered to the participants.  Ideally, the organizers would like the workshop participants to become a Delphi panel, submitting their forecasts of the future of family business education and shaping those forecasts based on the feedback they receive in subsequent Delphi rounds.  The publishers will donate free copies of the organizers’ most recent books to the first 20 registrants for this workshop.
 
 
Issues that influence Entrepreneurship programs by using PQ faculty especially as they relate to AACSB accreditation
Presenters: K. Mark Weaver, Louisiana State University; Robert M. Harper, California State University, Fresno; Timothy S. Mescon, Columbus State University; Jerry Trapnell, AACSB
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (8:00AM -Noon)
  
Description: The challenge to Business Schools today of offering innovative, leading edge programs while pursuing and maintaining AACSB accreditation is most distinctive and unique. A great deal of thought and development has been directed toward clarifying Academically Qualified and Professionally Qualified faculty. AACSB has reinforced that both categories are essential for a fully engaged business school. How to balance the expectations while developing creative, market-focused programs is the real challenge.
   
There are perils and Successes of using PQ faculty in academic programs and maintaining a delicate balance. Issues include impacts faced in a union environment, controlled and constrained budget situations, and maintaining PQ qualification for full-time lecturers.  How do you keep them happy and motivated, how do you reward them, how do you involve them in traditional academic discussion, and how do you promote their importance while at the same time preventing the impression of being second class.
  
What it takes to develop non-traditional faculty to teach entrepreneurship courses what a PQ status is and how it can now be met.
 
 
The Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Curriculum: Establishing a Paradigm
Presenters: Fred Maidment, Western Connecticut State University; Sharon Alpi, Millikin University; Patricia G. Greene, Babson College; Ralph Hanks, Bowling Green State University; Jerry Katz, St. Louis University; K. Mark Weaver, Louisiana State University
 
Workshop Length: Full Day (8:00AM – Noon and 1:00PM -5:00PM)
  
Description: Undergraduate curricula in Entrepreneurship are as many and varied as there are programs in the subject.  While many of these programs are often covering much of the same material, they are often covering it in very different ways and in different sequences.  This had led to problems and confusion for Entrepreneurship educators. The first is in presenting and representing the discipline to non-entrepreneurship educators both inside and outside the business school. Since there is no agreed upon series of courses, or often names of course to be studied, educators outside of entrepreneurship are often confused as to the maturity and legitimacy of the discipline. Unlike Accounting, where the course are identified and the sequence is definitive. While this may add to the creativity of the discipline, something that is innate to Entrepreneurship, it does not help Entrepreneurship education in establishing itself in the academy.
  
This leads to the second problem of legitimacy in the business academe. Entrepreneurship is often viewed as a kind of sub-discipline in the business school, often a kind of sub-specialty of Strategic Management, not as a unique and separate, stand-alone discipline such as Marketing or Management. This leads to problems for Entrepreneurship educators in obtaining resources for their programs and in getting their research recognized by their institutions for purposes of tenure and promotion.
  
It is the intent of this workshop to develop a paradigm for the undergraduate curriculum in Entrepreneurship.  This paradigm will help to establish the legitimacy of the discipline of Entrepreneurship in the Business School so that faculty in Entrepreneurship will be able to gain resources for the discipline/ department and tenure for the faculty.
 
 
Using the new digital media in entrepreneurship education
Presenters: Michael G. Goldsby, Ball State University; Cecil Bohanon, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (8:00AM -Noon)
  
Description: This preconference session will show the documentary produced by Ball State. The session co-hosts will then tell the story of how the documentary was created. Information will also be provided on how to use the latest digital technologies and social media in entrepreneurship programs.
The Ball State business documentary is entitled “Increasing the Odds: How to Start a Business.”  The target markets for the film are incubation centers, start-up advisors, and academic entrepreneurship programs.  The film is designed to help the naïve but aspiring entrepreneur avoid crucial mistakes in developing a business.  The content is not highly abstract, specific or theoretical, but emphasizes simple points that academics and practitioners agree are essential to starting a successful business. The film features a number of successful start-up businesses in various stages of development to dramatically illustrate the abovementioned points. In addition, experts in business start-ups are featured. The companies examined include Big Sky Brewing of Missoula, Montana; Air Robotics LLC of Muncie, Indiana; Blue Bottle Coffee Shop of Muncie, Indiana; Vera Bradley Designs of Fort Wayne, Indiana; Ball Corporation of Broomfield, Colorado and Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, Missouri.
The film unfolds along the following thematic lines:
  • “Passionate commitment.”  Does the aspiring entrepreneur have the passion for the business?  Are they willing to make a 24/7 commitment to their business?
  • “Pass the market test.”  Will the product or service of the entrepreneur pass the market test?  Will it serve a need that is not currently being served?  How is it better than its alternatives?  How is it catered to the needs of its users and final customers?  Can it be produced at a cost that allows it to be priced attractively and profitably?  The vision of the entrepreneur must be other directed—towards those who are to ultimately benefit from the product or service.
  • “The business plan.”  It is important to be outwardly focused, to network in the industry, with potential customers and anyone who is interested in the product or service.  It is important to get outside help and advice about details of the operation.  Outsource weaknesses, yet make sure all inside the firm are aware of the overall operation of the firm.  It is also important to be flexible, to change as external and internal conditions change.
  • “Persistence.” The entrepreneur must have persistence.  They must be able to be knocked down and get back up.
 
 
Whole Brain Technology and the Entrepreneurial Classroom
Presenters: Joseph A. Kayne, Miami University; Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, Herrmann International; Edward Lumsdaine, Michigan Technological University
 
Workshop Length: Half Day (8:00AM -Noon)
  
Description: Currently, the entrepreneurship programs at a small number of universities including Miami University and the University of North Dakota successfully use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) as a teaching resource.  The workshop “Whole Brain Thinking in the Entrepreneurial Classroom” is designed to introduce a broader range of entrepreneurship faculty to the value of whole brain thinking and how it can be used in the classroom and as a research tool. The workshop design will replicate the experience students would have if an instructor elected to use the HBDI as a class resource.
  
Prior to the workshop, all participants will be given an access code to complete the HBDI assessment on line.  They will also have access to the HBDI “Thinking Accelerator” which is an on-line debriefing which includes access to their personal profiles.  Therefore, when the participant comes to the workshop, they will already have an understanding of what HBDI is and their own thinking style preferences.
   
At the workshop, the panel will focus on options for using the HBDI information in the classroom.  These include:
  • Building “thinking diverse” teams.  The panel will explain how HBDI has been used to assign members to team projects.  The benefits of this approach are two-fold.  Students experience the productivity increase of thinking diverse teams (highlighted in the HBR article, “Putting Your Company’s Whole Brain to Work.”  Students also learn who their own preferences affect their interactions with team members who might not share their thinking styles.
  • Tailoring messages to thinking diverse audiences.  Whether selling a product or service to an individual customer or trying to sell an entrepreneurial concept to a potential investor, an understanding of whole brain thinking can increase the odds the message is heard.
  • Enhancing creativity.  Looking at a problem from the perspective of individuals with different HBDI preferences open the door to additional solutions or variations of the solution.
 
 

You can register for pre-conference sessions as part of the online conference registration process. Click here for Conference registration information.