Babson College: Innovative entrepreneurship education

Babson College is a private business school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, globally recognized for its entrepreneurship education. It was founded in 1919 by financier Roger Babson, for educating the “sons of businessmen” to take over their father’s businesses. More recently, Babson College has been ranked #1 in entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report for over 30 consecutive years. The emphasis is on hands-on learning, with their first-year students launching real businesses through its signature “Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship” course. It leads global entrepreneurship research through initiatives like the “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor” and supports startups via the Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.

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Dara Melnyk:

1. Focus matters. Babson College is what President Spinelli calls “the business equivalent of a music conservatory”. All faculty and students are doing or have done business. This creates a “dynamic ecosystem of interest and like-mindedness” that runs on intergenerational learning and networking.
2. Babson College follows a classic evolution of an innovative university, growing from survival to niche influence (only other business schools) to international influence (business education in business schools and beyond). The Babson Collaborative initiative currently includes almost 50 institutions in 30 different countries. The learning here? If you are doing something right as an innovative institution, but no one seems to know about it, give it time. It took Babson ~100 years.
3. On spreading word about one's approaches, President Spinelli commented: “I think the core mission of colleges and universities is to share... It is crazy to think that I'm going to create knowledge and understanding and hold it really tight. … It's counterintuitive, and I think it's opposed to the mission of higher education or education in general.” I hope every innovative college will leave by your book, Stephen.
4. “I want you to call me your educator for 80 years”. Like many modern HEIs, Babson College is not interested in graduating students and never seeing them again—it wants to be the place its graduates keep coming back for more to. Stephen Spinelli is not only a college president, he’s also a businessman. He’s never sent a customer away, so why should universities send students away?
5. HEIs in the US (and worldwide) must experiment in a much narrower range than most companies plus, unlike companies, they do not patent their innovations in governance of teaching or research and are not rewarded for ingenuity by larger margins. This, of course, slows down innovation. It looks like there is a lot to change there.