Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Bootcamp kicks off at UW-Madison
When it comes to business, every good idea needs a business plan, a market and some capital.
This week, some of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s best minds are learning how to take new ideas to market and launch them into businesses at the Wisconsin School of Business’s Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Bootcamp.
The camp is aimed at graduate students studying chemistry, biology, law, engineering and other sciences at UW–Madison. More than 60 graduate-level students representing more than 50 majors across the UW–Madison campus are participating in the intensive, hands-on week of learning focused on technology entrepreneurship and exploring how business startups can create both economic and social value.
Through the program, students learn basic concepts and tools to imagine and assess product ideas, form and fund a technology-based startup, and understand and use financial analysis. Case analyses, a site visit to a local business, networking social events and expert panels help students make links between concepts and practice. The program exposes students to the many resources available in Madison and on campus and helps them learn how to use those resources effectively.
International industry experts John Morgridge, former chairman and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems, and G. Steven Burrill, chief executive officer of Burrill & Company, will be returning this year to teach sessions.
They join top Wisconsin School of Business faculty, including Russ Coff, Wisconsin Naming Partners Professor of Strategic Management; Phil Greenwood, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship; Chip Hunter, senior associate dean, associate dean of the full-time MBA program and associate professor of management and human resources; Anne Miner, Ford Motor Company Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Management and Human Resources; Dan Olszewski, director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, and John Surdyk, Burrill competition director and associate director of INSITE (Initiative in Transformational Entrepreneurship).
Top field experts include Carl Gulbrandsen, Michael Falk and Laura Heisler from the Wisconsin Alumni Association Research Foundation. Charles Holloway, Stanford University’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers Professor of Management, Emeritus and director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies has joined the program for a second year. Key community members play a key role in panels and case discussions throughout the week.
The program syllabus includes a dinner with UW–Madison entrepreneurship alums and a site visit to Electronic Theatre Controls, a privately held Middleton, Wis.-based international manufacturer of entertainment and architectural lighting systems.
The Wisconsin Entrepreneurial Bootcamp is a joint venture of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at the Wisconsin School of Business and the cross-campus INSITE, with a core organizing team of Hunter, Miner, Morgridge, Olszewski and Surdyk.