Sucking the marrow out of business school

There were a lot of things I'd hoped to get out of business school -- I wanted to learn how to use business to make a positive social difference, expand my quantitative abilities, and get a great network; these were all a given and common reasons to take on such an educational venture.

But there were several other goals -- smaller things -- that I'd hoped to get out of my experience here at Cornell. It seems that a couple of them may soon come to pass.

One of them was learning to write a business plan. I signed up for the course, Entrepreneurship and Private Equity, knowing that the major course assignment was to form a team, brainstorm an idea, and write and present a complete business plan at the end of the semester. My new company is called Green Card Inc., and it's a way to help retailers and consumers use their existing purchasing behaviors to make a social difference.

The other thing I wanted to get out of school was something that had attracted me to Stanford University -- a course called Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability. The course put together teams of business students, engineers, education specialists, architects, etc. to design, prototype, and build affordable products that serve real needs of people in the developing world.

Though Cornell has a lot in common with Stanford -- strong engineering programs, large research potential, bright students -- it doesn't have a design institute or focus. So the burden fell to me to create the course that I'd desired to take at Stanford. I've found another student interested in moving this initiative forward, and we're working to make the course a reality under a different moniker -- Creative Design for Affordability.

This is still far from a reality, but the wheels are turning. I didn't realize how much of a challenge it would be to start a course from scratch, attract a faculty member, and design a syllabus...

Though a challenge, I'm convinced that, with enough enthusiasm and energy, we'll be able to make the course a reality. Now, turning our business plan into a profitable enterprise is another matter entirely.