Education

Whoever created the first business plan competition was on to something. I applaud their idea and implementing it. That time passed. We know more effective ways to motivate learning entrepreneurship. Those competitions aren't helping. They distract students from starting businesses with one-time awards too often created in the interests of venture capitalists, not aspiring entrepreneurs. To illustrate, consider the question: Which would you prefer: to win a business plan competition, to get investment, or to sell your product and make a profit? These results don't have to exclude each other but pursuing competitions takes time from getting investment and selling your product. Students, I recommend looking at business plan competitions skeptically. Faculty, I recommend you consider other ways to motivate practicing entrepreneurship than competitions that…

I can't tell you how honored and flattered I feel from the following message a former student sent me on my birthday. She took my class in her first semester in school, just months after finishing high school, and got her project running before the semester ended, still working with the partnership with the company she started forming that semester. Dear Josh, I would like to wish the most inspiring, hard-working, talented, and generous professor, friend, entrepreneur, and NYC marathon/world burpee champ the happiest and most wonderful of birthdays today. Your guidance and mentorship have meant so much to me over the last almost-three (I can't believe it's been that long, either!) years of my time at NYU. Anytime I email you--to update you on…

Einstein said You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war which I would apply in the context of entrepreneurship You cannot simultaneously prevent and create bureaucracy and in education You cannot simultaneously make a student dependent and independent yet universities seem to try to do both. I think professors feel too much incentive to create programs, centers, and institutes to stop themselves. I've seen professors and administrators spend years chasing government grants, leading students to chase government grants, to create centers and institutes of entrepreneurship, never mentioning anything about customers or sales. In those years, I didn't see them actually help students. Their plan was to create the entrepreneurial program first, then work with the students. I've seen professors and administrators, meaning to promote entrepreneurship,…

I've written before about the problems with the Myers-Briggs test. Wikipedia points to plenty of research that shows it lacks validity, utility, reliability, and that its underlying model of four dichotomies has no evidence. I've written about how its model that your traits on four axes stay the same independent of situation don't help you and undermine your improvement. Some of my favorite posts show the model of what it calls introversion and extroversion likely make your life worse and complacent. I consider that model bankrupt at best and offer another model to replace introversion and extroversion that readers have described as one of the best things they've read to improve their lives. Here's a way to make money helping people improve their lives (instead…