NEN - Entrepreneurship Week, Feb 2-9, 2008

[Tarun Arora]

I got an email yesterday from NEN about their second annual Entrepreneurship Week, Feb 2-9, 2008. It seems to be one hell of an event with about 2,000 events and activities across 30 cities.

Check out the event web site at EWEEK.

The theme/ focus of this year's event is Industry & Academia. I think the theme is just right for the times. While we are seeing a large number of new Indian startups in web 2.0/mobile/e-commerce space, I guess what is needed (before India can move up the value chain) is academia be a part of the food chain of entrepreneurship. India has a large no. of engineering/business/other academic institutes and industry needs to sponsor as well leverage the research in these institutions. In Silicon valley, we see so many ideas that are commercialized straight from research labs of colleges like Stanford, Berkeley, VMWare being the latest. Not to mention all the student (drop outs) that have started great companies like Google, Yahoo etc.

NEN is a unique organization, it has been co-founded by five of India's premier academic institutions: IIT Bombay; IIM Ahmedabad; SP Jain Institute, Bombay; IBAB, Bangalore and BITS Pilani. Its focus is on introducing a new paradigm in entrepreneurship education in India and for that it works with colleges/campuses throughout the country to set up entrepreneurship education/events. In country like India, where colleges mass produce an army of graduates ready to work in corporate world specially at today's high salaries, this seems like the right focus/mission. We need to get entrepreneurship in the whole framework of our education system before we will see global companies emerge from India. That said it will also take a huge social/cultural shift to have more students take the high risk path of entrepreneurship and to have academia part of the process.

NEN, Thanks for putting the "COOL" in entrepreneurship.