Good ideas and entrepreneurial initiatives sometimes fall short of their true potential because of limited resources.
The Academy will provide funding for faculty and graduate students to facilitate and stimulate the development of entrepreneurial ingenuity on the Urbana campus.
If you have a creative idea to expand the understanding and appreciation of entrepreneurship on campus, let us know. If you want to learn more about entrepreneurship by attending a professional conference or seminar or would like to develop an experience-based learning program for students, get in touch. Other initiatives that would qualify for support include:
- Research support for faculty that enhances understanding of entrepreneurship
- Support to attend entrepreneurship competitions such as business plan and case competitions
- Assistance in the exploration of an entrepreneurial opportunity such as a new business venture or social entrepreneurship initiative
- Creative projects that have the potential to generate social, intellectual, or economic value to the Illinois community
Awards up to $5,000 will be granted. To get started, contact the dean of your college. The dean provides the first level of screening, and recommends appropriate projects to the executive director of the Academy. Applications are accepted on a rotating basis and a review and decision will be made within 30 days of submission to the Academy.
Entrepreneurship and Hispanic Communities -- Proposal to Formalize a Cross-Campus Initiative
Ann Abbott & Darcy Lear
Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
2006
Across the University of Illinois, several trends have recently emerged or gained prominence.
- The spread of entrepreneurial thinking throughout the U of I campus and across disciplines, with the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership serving as a catalyst. This coincides with the presidential mandate to plan for an entrepreneurial university with the goal of becoming socially, academically and operationally entrepreneurial.
- The emphasis on public engagement at the U of I through curricular innovations and community-based learning.
- A growing Hispanic community and its important relationships with our university.
Although these trends have emerged independently of each other, if connected they can create a strong impetus to address the concerns of the University and all its constituents. Our proposal addresses these three trends through two initiatives: the establishment of a cross-campus working group and a multimedia documentation of the work that is currently being done.
Spanish and Entrepreneurship Working Group
We will invite faculty who either engage in actual entrepreneurship or approach their work related to Hispanic communities in entrepreneurial ways to participate. We will promote a broad understanding of entrepreneurship by including initiatives that create value in academic, business, social, and cultural contexts. We will focus on entrepreneurial activities within Hispanic communities as well as entrepreneurial relationships among university and Hispanic communities.
Goals of working group:
- Support community-based learning in which U of I students interact with Hispanic communities locally, regionally and internationally.
- Provide opportunities on campus for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education that directly impact Hispanic communities.
- Expand and sustain existing internship program that links U of I students and Hispanic communities both here and abroad. These internship placements will be in both social service and business sectors.
- Promote all the above initiatives to Hispanic students for recruitment and retention.
- Encourage research, service, and teaching collaborations among participating faculty.
- Leverage all of these activities to draft funding initiatives to support and sustain Entrepreneurship and Hispanic Communities.
Informational video
A video that documents U of I activities related to entrepreneurship and Hispanic communities will allow us to share those results with a broader public. Not only will the video promote the activities of the working group, it will also document university activities already in place.
It will feature existing programs, but we anticipate the establishment of the working group will enrich the content. It will feature U of I students actively engaged with Hispanic communities. Stakeholders will discuss the impact that these collaborations produce. Stakeholders include the organizations receiving the interns, organizations where the students do community-based learning, clients in the community context, the students themselves, and representatives from campus organizations whose mission has been furthered by the existing programs.
The video will be prepared as a series of modules, segmented for specific audiences and purposes. While there will clearly be overlap among them, individual modules will be used to:
- Recruit Hispanic students to the U of I
- Retain Hispanic students at the U of I
- Inform the wider public, including community partners, potential students, parents, potential internship partners, business communities, funding bodies, Hispanic communities, etc.
- Report to partners and sponsors
- Share curricular and research models with other universities
- Promote the activities of the working group and our coordinated efforts
Youth Social Entrepreneurship Conference
Ann Bishop
Graduate School of Library & Information Science and Community Informatics Initiative
2006
Support is sought from the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership for a Youth as Social Entrepreneurs symposium, to be held in April 2006 on the Illinois campus. Illinois Extension and the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences will also collaborate.
Youth from across the country will participate. Groups include the Hispanic Youth Symposium in Washington, DC; the Llano Grande Center for Research and Development, in Texas; the Youth Action Research Institute of the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, Connecticut; the Youth Media Workshop in Champaign-Urbana; Café Teatro Batey Urbano in Chicago; Street Level Youth Media in Chicago; and Community Concepts from East St. Louis, Illinois. Youth will have the opportunity to present their experiences, hear from other students and project staff; and strengthen their knowledge and skills in social entrepreneurship.
Economic, Intellectual, Political, and Social Entrepreneurism among Immigrants in Non-Traditional Destinations
Noreen M. Sugrue
Women and Gender in Global Perspectives
2006
BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR PROJECT
Focusing on non-traditional destinations is important because new destinations are experiencing surges in population growth. For example, in 2000, immigrant population grew by 50 percent in more than half of all Illinois counties and most Illinois counties are neither traditional urban ethnic enclaves nor traditional immigrant destinations. In addition, non-traditional destinations have more limited and varied economic opportunities than traditional urban destinations; therefore, entrepreneurial behavior becomes even more important than it is in traditional ethnic urban enclaves. For example, a meatpacking plant opens in rural Iowa, drawing new immigrants to the community because of the jobs available, when the meat packing plant closes, unless a strong immigrant economic infrastructure has been constructed due to the entrepreneurial activities of immigrants, non-urban communities cannot absorb these immigrants into their labor market, therefore, immigrants will be forced to find new places to live; they will become the migrant workers of the 21st century: service sector and low wage factory migrant workers. In short, without an immigrant entrepreneurial class in these non-traditional destinations, recent immigrants to non-traditional destinations will exhibit living and internal migration patterns that more resemble farm workers/farm hands than it does their counterparts who immigrate to traditional destinations. And, along with that migrant lifestyle comes familial, health, economic, educational, and political instability.
To avoid the creation of the 21st century migrant workers, immigrants must create and sustain not only a strong economic foundation, but also strong political, educational, and social foundations, and the way that is done is through entrepreneurial activities. However, to fully understand the creation of these communities and sustainable infrastructures requires that we expand our definition of entrepreneurial activities and entrepreneur. The creation of sustainable communities requires economic, intellectual, social, and political entrepreneurs. The ‘new’ entrepreneurs, like traditional economic entrepreneurs, must be leaders and not risk averse. Also, like economic entrepreneurial activities, the ‘new’ or expanded entrepreneurial activities require that people invest capital and exploit social connections to achieve the desired ends.
Expanding how one thinks about immigrant entrepreneurial activities allow us to understand how immigrants live, create community, develop economic structures, and create sustainable infrastructures for themselves, their families, and others. While this expanded definition of entrepreneur and entrepreneurial activity is important in understanding how immigrants live and build sustainable communities in all destinations, because of the unique characteristics of non-traditional destinations, we believe that conceptually developing this expanded definition and empirically examining it in non-traditional destinations affords greater opportunity to understand its importance to the development and sustainability of immigrant communities.
Finally, any project that links entrepreneurial activities and immigrants must recognize that the category ‘immigrant’ is not homogenous. The intra and inter immigrant group variations will be significant, and that any conceptual and/or empirical undertakings in this arena must fully integrate considerations of that heterogeneity into the work.
DEVELOPING THE PROPOSED LINE OF INQUIRY
These are the ideas driving the development of the proposed project. The commitment of the proposed project is to develop a line of inquiry specifically dedicated to
- Exploring how immigrants create entrepreneurial opportunities
- Analyzing differences within and among immigrant groups in terms of their entrepreneurial opportunities and willingness to engage in entrepreneurial activities
- Studying how different immigrant groups differentiate between ‘earning a little extra on the side’ and undertaking an entrepreneurial adventure
- Developing theoretical models to explain the entrepreneurial behaviors of immigrants generally as well as those of specific immigrant groups
- Identifying the strongest explanatory variables for explaining the entrepreneurial choices of immigrants
- Studying the cultural, political, economic, social, and religious contexts of sending countries in order to understand how those contexts affect attitudes and behaviors related to entrepreneurism in the United States
- Examining the attitudes of the host countries citizens towards the entrepreneurial behaviors of immigrants
- Developing a conceptual argument for expanding the definition of entrepreneurism among immigrants in order to include intellectual entrepreneurism, social entrepreneurism, and ‘black market’ entrepreneurism.
SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES TO BE UNDERTAKEN
To fully develop a line of inquiry linking entrepreneurism and immigration, a working group of interdisciplinary scholars must be brought together. In that group conceptual arguments will be developed and empirical studies will be designed, funded (hopefully), and carried out. However, in order to get to the point of empirical work, including hypothesis testing, a small group of scholars must be brought together, and for that to occur there must be a catalyst. This project is designed to be that catalyst.
To create the Illinois working group that will develop this line of inquiry, we will use the resources requested in this proposal to
- Bring in experts from academia and business to talk with us about the work we are proposing to do
- Develop and secure funding for the collection of pilot data
- Secure release time so that Illinois researchers can develop and write about the conceptual foundation that is required for the broader study of immigrants and entrepreneurial activities, especially in non-traditional locales
- Creating a sustainable Illinois working group whose focus is immigration and entrepreneurship
- Publishing theoretical and empirical articles and books in this area
- Securing funded research to test relevant hypotheses and models
- Influencing public policy in order to more effectively allow immigrant communities, in all locales, to flourish, economically, politically, and socially
Frontiers in Services Marketing Conference
Cele Otnes
Department of Business Administration, College of Business
2007
Support is sought to present research at the Frontiers in Services Marketing conference, which is dedicated to innovation in services. The paper to be presented is titled “How Ritual Use Varies with the Entrepreneurial Orientation of Firms.”
Abstract
Rituals are a popular topic within consumer behavior. Scholars have, e.g., explored meanings of holidays, gift giving and brand-community rituals. These studies find rituals to be financially, socially, and emotionally significant to consumers.
Extending Ritual Research to Marketing Strategy. Some service providers include rituals in their customer experiences. For example, during Saturn’s nationally-implemented car delivery ceremony, salespeople encircle customers, thank them for buying a car, perform a “Saturn cheer” and take photos of customers and their cars. Undoubtedly, Saturn hopes the ceremony will enhance customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, but theoretical and empirical research on how rituals can affect brand value is lacking. One promising topic is whether and how services that differ in entrepreneurial orientation (EO) differ in their strategic use of rituals. While EO is a popular research topic, less is known about how firms differing in EO engage their customers and behave towards various stakeholders. Exploring the use of rituals by service providers who differ in EO offers potentially fertile ground for bridging the gap between the literatures on ritualistic consumption and on marketing strategy.
In this study, we examine the following: How do service providers differing in EO (1) integrate rituals into their customer experiences? and (2) differ in the strategic marketing objectives they hope rituals can accomplish?
Method
From Sept.-Dec. 2006, we conducted depth interviews with 23 service providers in a small Midwest city (pop. 100,000) and surrounding communities. We sought informants representing a diverse mix across five dimensions: service target (bodies/goods/minds/intangible assets); customer relationship (formal/informal), level of customer contact (high/medium/low); nature of peak demand (can/cannot always be met); and location of service delivery (at service provider/at customer/at arm’s length). We presented Rook’s definition of rituals to potential informants and included only those who said they employed customer-oriented rituals. We then asked them to describe the services they provide, ritualistic activities they offer, structural/functional elements of the rituals, strategic objectives for the rituals, how they believe their competition uses rituals, and customer/community expectations of rituals for this specific service provider and for the service category in general. We retained three low EO firms and seven high-EO firms for further analysis.
Findings
We find high-EO service providers employ complex customer rituals such as tours, ceremonies, gift-giving and preparing sacred spaces for customers. Thus, they typically incorporate most or all structural aspects of ritual, and often strategically consider what the functional aspects can achieve as well. High-EO service providers also use rituals to achieve two types of strategic objectives. Mid-level strategic objectives include socializing consumers into service-provider policies (e.g., “softening the blow” when providers must impose on consumer agency to perform services), enhancing the efficiency and quality of provider/customer interactions, and challenging consumer stereotypes (e.g., “real men don’t stay at bed and breakfasts”). High EO firms also strive to achieve ultimate strategic objectives, including facilitating a perceptual paradigm shift of a service category in consumers’ minds (e.g., making “cognitive room” for providers to offer premium-priced services in a service category consumers previously regarded as “moderately-priced”), differentiating themselves from the competition, and increasing loyalty, WOM, compliance, satisfaction, and sales. By contrast, low-EO firms typically limit their ritual offerings to one or a few non-integrated structural elements (e.g., special tablecloths; sending Christmas cards to customers), and do not really consider the ways rituals can enable them to achieve mid-level or ultimate objectives. Most tellingly, low-EO firms passively rely on their consumers to suggest or co-create rituals while patronizing their services, even if these are expected or highly appropriate for a service category. Furthermore, high-EO firms often use rituals to increase face time with customers and thus reduce dissatisfaction—but low-EO firms refrain from using rituals that might increase customer contact, even if they acknowledge these rituals might enhance customer experience.
Symposium: Women’s Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Medicines and Services in sub-Saharan Africa and the Diaspora
Ezekiel Kalipeni
Department of Geography, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Karen Flynn
Afro-American Studies and Research Program, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
2007
Co-sponsorship and support is sought for this September 2007 symposium on HIV/AIDS to be held at the University of Illinois. The papers will also be published as an edited book. Many of the proposed titles for presentation at the conference touch on issues of equality, patents, markets, pharmaceutical pricing policies, etc with reference to HIV/AIDS medications and services.
The following proposed papers are examples of those that might fit nicely with the objectives and goals of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership:
Dr. Agnes Chimbiri, Director, Center for Reproductive Health, College of Medicine, University of Malawi. “Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Malawi: An Analysis of Organizational Culture and Institutional Obstacles.”
Dr. Susan Craddock, Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota. Title of Presentation: “Global Perspectives on AIDS Vaccines, Market Incentives, and Human Rights.”
Dr. Harriet Birungi, Population Council, Nairobi, Kenya. “The Business of Medicines and the Politics of Knowledge.”
Dr. Susan Craddock, Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota. “Patents Versus Patients? Markets, Ethics and Pharmaceutical Pricing Policies.”