NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic Recognized as an Exemplary Program

The NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic, based in the Poole College of Management, was presented with the Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Program award by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). The recognition was announced at USASBE’s annual conference held in in Philadelphia, January 20-22, 2017.

USASBE presents the annual competitive award to recognize an exemplary emerging entrepreneurship education program that has been in existence for three years or less. Factors considered in selecting the recipient include innovation, quality, potential viability, comprehensiveness, depth of support, sustainability and impact.

The NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic was established in January 2015 and is based at HQ Raleigh, a co-working hub that is home to over 200 new ventures.

The dynamic startup environment serves as a classroom for entrepreneurial learning and center of interaction between NC State University and area startups. Students, working in diverse teams, serve as consultants to partner companies to evaluate weaknesses and develop and execute strategic action plans to help solve specific business needs.

Since its launch, nearly 300 student clinicians have worked with more than 150 startups, logging more than 10,000 hours of work in the entrepreneurial community, said Lewis Sheats, director of the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic.

Sheats, in collaboration with fellow entrepreneurship faculty in Poole College’s Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, developed the Entrepreneurship Clinic based on the university teaching hospital model. It provides a teaching and learning environment for faculty, students and entrepreneurs, with the goal of building the next generation of new ventures.

The Clinic draws a cross-section of NC State students, including those completing the entrepreneurship concentration in Poole College’s bachelor’s degree program in business management, as well as students in other degree programs at NC State with a strong interest in entrepreneurship.

Lewis Sheats, NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic director, accepted the award on behalf of the program.

“I’m very proud of the students that have been an integral piece in developing the clinic,” Sheats said. “This award is representative of their dedication and effort to build a program that provides real value to our entrepreneurship community and their growing desire to be entrepreneurial thinkers.”

This is the third time that Sheats and the Clinic have been recognized in the past two years. At the 2016 USASBE conference, Poole College faculty and staff associated with the Clinic received the Outstanding Workshop in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy for their workshop about the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinical Model. Presenters were Sheats; Jeffrey Pollack, assistant professor of entrepreneurship; Steve Markham, professor and director of the Entrepreneurship Collaborative at Poole College; and Jared Childs, program manager at the Clinic. In 2015, Sheats was named the Dr. John S. Risley Entrepreneur of the Year by NC State’s Office of Technology Transfer.

Learn more about the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic.

Read about the Mentor Program that connects students with the area’s entrepreneurship community.

This post was originally published in Poole College of Management News.