Entrepreneurship, the process of starting a business or organization, is a growing trend at Texas Tech, according to Saba Nafees, a master’s student in mathematical biology. The process of starting a business isn’t perhaps as death-defying as jumping out of a plane parachuteless, but Nafees, a graduate student and president of startup organization TTIME (or Texas Tech Innovation Mentorship and Entrepreneurship) sees a connection.
Nafees’ organization is just one of several groups springing up on Texas Tech University’s campus – all focused on entrepreneurship. The College of Media & Communication’s Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group (MEIG) and the Rawls College of Business Administration’s Collegiate Entrepreneurs Association (CEO) are a part of a larger trend of college campuses offering their students the capability and education to run their own business.
Jennifer Horn, Texas Tech’s Director of Translational Research and Entrepreneurialism, said the university hopes to not only educate students on entrepreneurship and the associated opportunities, but also to make it something that’s familiar to them from the beginning of their college careers.
“The end goal is that we get a culture out there for students, where they’re familiar with this,” Horn said. “We want to educate students on what this is, and then we hope that they latch on to it early, if it’s what they’re really wanting to do and what they’re interested in, but at the same time, we’re kind of planting that seed and the know-how, so that at some point later in their life, if this comes up or this possibility, they’ll have the know-how to act on it.”
One of the things Texas Tech entrepreneurs learn through the startup-oriented atmosphere cultivated at Tech is the importance of thinking outside the box. Isaac Griswold-Steiner, a computer science major and entrepreneur who was introduced to the world of entrepreneurialism by Nafees and a stint at a startup company in India, said the beauty of entrepreneurship is the freedom to utilize a different mindset.
“I think it requires a different type of thinking. It’s not simply, you have this very straightforward problem and there’s an exact answer. There’s multiple answers, there’s multiple ways of going about it.”
Creativity is crucial in the learning process behind entrepreneurship, Horn said.
“It’s a learning process. We try to provide them ingredients to help them along that path, but it really is very much the students and what they have a passion for and what they’re willing to go after.”
3-Day Startup - an event started at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 to help university students through the dynamics of starting a business - tests would-be entrepreneurs and follows them from conception to completion in a constant, 36-hour competition that’s become the sprint race of entrepreneurship.
“The idea right now is just to throw as many students – as many motivated students – as we can into an actual environment where they work on a startup,” he said. “Because a lot of people go into it saying, yeah I want to start a business, I want to be a millionaire, but they don’t really have a grasp of the challenges associated with it. So the more students we can throw into that kind of environment, and the more people we can give that experience to, the more we can grow our community at Tech.”
Nafees equated entrepreneurship to jumping out of a plane without a parachute - there’s an immediate problem, and an immediate need for a solution. Entrepreneurs have a unique ability to fix it.
“What an entrepreneur would do is make the parachute while he or she is coming down onto the ground, and thus be able to survive.”
