Today I had two meetings arranged: first, I was to finally meet Pascal Marmier who I have emailed with many times, and second, I was to go to visit Babson College...
Pascal is a Swiss guy living in Boston for many years, and he is Swiss Consul in Boston and Director of Swissnex Boston... First I met him some years ago over email, being introduced by Roman Stanek (whose last company was based in Cambridge - just next to Boston), which is already a great reference... And now I finally met him and also got to see Swissnex offices in Cambridge (2 floors near the main square, very nice - BTW, the 2nd floor was opened just in March by the former U.S. president Al Gore)... But what I was really amazed about was how the Swiss succeeded in build really a very useful and effective platform for science, technology and innovation, which serves as a base for Swiss entrepreneurs, universities and innovators, sort of a gateway to Boston and the U.S.; and all that as a governmental agency... It's just about people - CzechInvest and CzechTrade should really be learning from guys like Pascal, how to build something that actually makes a difference, which proactively seeks opportunities and helps in tech transfer, entrepreneurship and U.S. market access... Congrats, Pascal, very nice job...
And after a friendly chat with Pascal I went off to Wellesley to visit Babson College... Babson is not as well known as Harvard, Stanford or MIT, but I actually wanted to go because it has a reputation of business school extremely focused on entrepreneurship and raising entrepreneurs - Babson is also the coordinator of the GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) research for which my alma mater University of Economics in Prague is the Czech partner for, concretely my friends Martin Lukes and Martina Jakl... On the plane to Boston I read the last issue of the Entrepreneur Magazine, and I was delighted to find out that Babson ranked #1 in Entrepreneurship among graduate schools in the U.S. - and later during the visit I learned that it has actually been #1 for the last consecutive years - that is pretty consistent, isn't it... 
Babson's campus is a beautiful one at first sight... It consists of red-brick buildings just randomly distributed in a park, in the green, across the Wellesley road there is a golf course... Out of all universities that I've visited, Babson is the most beautiful, quite, convenient and comfortable - no wonder its address is Forest Street, Babson Park... 15 years ago, I would really love to go to study there...
At Babson I met with three people: Candida Brush (Professor of Entrepreneurship - and an active angel investor herself), Daniel Marques (Manager, Entrepreneur Development) and mainly Trish Costello (Director of Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship), and learnt many interting things... Mainly, what was refreshing to learn was that Entrepreneurship at Babson is not just one of academic disciplines, but it's a way of life for the students and professors... It's a requirement and also students usually apply to study at Babson because they do want to become entrepreneurs - some to make a lot of money, some want to become social entrepreneurs, some to become corporate entrepreneurs, but they all get to "live entrepreneurship" at Babson...
All Freshmen (1st year of college) have to take a course called FME (Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship) where they have to form teams and actually go out and start their own "live and real" companies... It's a whole process where they first brainstorm about what they could work on, then vote, and at the end register the company and get it off the ground by producing and selling the products or services... Not a game, real business... And each of the teams actually received (small) funding from the university... Sounds like sci-fi...? Wait, it gets better... After 6 months they have to "harvest" the company = prove that it can make profits and collect them... Students don't get to keep it, it all goes to charity of their choice (so they also learn that they should be giving money back to the society) - but they can do a "re-start" which means they can buy the company from the university (pretty much for the money that was put into it as the initial funding) and continue and make it successful and IPO (or sell)... And believe it or not, there are cases like that - probably 10% of the FME student companies are bought back by the student teams or their parts... Fantastic...! And an average profit that the companies make over the 6 months is around $ 20 thousand... I HAVE TO bring this program to the Czech Republic - Trish promised to create an FME package that Babson will be able to license to other universities... Get ready, VSE, I am coming... And Martin and Martina will help me...!
Pascal is a Swiss guy living in Boston for many years, and he is Swiss Consul in Boston and Director of Swissnex Boston... First I met him some years ago over email, being introduced by Roman Stanek (whose last company was based in Cambridge - just next to Boston), which is already a great reference... And now I finally met him and also got to see Swissnex offices in Cambridge (2 floors near the main square, very nice - BTW, the 2nd floor was opened just in March by the former U.S. president Al Gore)... But what I was really amazed about was how the Swiss succeeded in build really a very useful and effective platform for science, technology and innovation, which serves as a base for Swiss entrepreneurs, universities and innovators, sort of a gateway to Boston and the U.S.; and all that as a governmental agency... It's just about people - CzechInvest and CzechTrade should really be learning from guys like Pascal, how to build something that actually makes a difference, which proactively seeks opportunities and helps in tech transfer, entrepreneurship and U.S. market access... Congrats, Pascal, very nice job...
And after a friendly chat with Pascal I went off to Wellesley to visit Babson College... Babson is not as well known as Harvard, Stanford or MIT, but I actually wanted to go because it has a reputation of business school extremely focused on entrepreneurship and raising entrepreneurs - Babson is also the coordinator of the GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) research for which my alma mater University of Economics in Prague is the Czech partner for, concretely my friends Martin Lukes and Martina Jakl... On the plane to Boston I read the last issue of the Entrepreneur Magazine, and I was delighted to find out that Babson ranked #1 in Entrepreneurship among graduate schools in the U.S. - and later during the visit I learned that it has actually been #1 for the last consecutive years - that is pretty consistent, isn't it... 
Babson's campus is a beautiful one at first sight... It consists of red-brick buildings just randomly distributed in a park, in the green, across the Wellesley road there is a golf course... Out of all universities that I've visited, Babson is the most beautiful, quite, convenient and comfortable - no wonder its address is Forest Street, Babson Park... 15 years ago, I would really love to go to study there...
At Babson I met with three people: Candida Brush (Professor of Entrepreneurship - and an active angel investor herself), Daniel Marques (Manager, Entrepreneur Development) and mainly Trish Costello (Director of Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship), and learnt many interting things... Mainly, what was refreshing to learn was that Entrepreneurship at Babson is not just one of academic disciplines, but it's a way of life for the students and professors... It's a requirement and also students usually apply to study at Babson because they do want to become entrepreneurs - some to make a lot of money, some want to become social entrepreneurs, some to become corporate entrepreneurs, but they all get to "live entrepreneurship" at Babson...All Freshmen (1st year of college) have to take a course called FME (Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship) where they have to form teams and actually go out and start their own "live and real" companies... It's a whole process where they first brainstorm about what they could work on, then vote, and at the end register the company and get it off the ground by producing and selling the products or services... Not a game, real business... And each of the teams actually received (small) funding from the university... Sounds like sci-fi...? Wait, it gets better... After 6 months they have to "harvest" the company = prove that it can make profits and collect them... Students don't get to keep it, it all goes to charity of their choice (so they also learn that they should be giving money back to the society) - but they can do a "re-start" which means they can buy the company from the university (pretty much for the money that was put into it as the initial funding) and continue and make it successful and IPO (or sell)... And believe it or not, there are cases like that - probably 10% of the FME student companies are bought back by the student teams or their parts... Fantastic...! And an average profit that the companies make over the 6 months is around $ 20 thousand... I HAVE TO bring this program to the Czech Republic - Trish promised to create an FME package that Babson will be able to license to other universities... Get ready, VSE, I am coming... And Martin and Martina will help me...!
Love the FME idea
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