Gary Schoeniger’s Commencement Address, Pierpont Community & Technical College, 2019
May 31, 2019
How Underdogs Win How do underdogs win? This is a question I’ve been pursuing for more than 25 years. How do those who have no particular advantage in life—those who may not be particularly brilliant or creative, those who may not come from privileged backgrounds, those who may not have advanced degrees—manage to rise above their circumstances to create meaningful and prosperous lives? My thought was that if I could somehow understand what makes…
Read moreNew Year, New Mindset: How Public Libraries Can Support Economic Development in Their Communities
January 15, 2019
Ice House Facilitator Duncan Smith is the Chief Strategist for EBSCO Information Services, a pioneer in the library services industry. After attending certification training in Durham, NC, Duncan was inspired by the potential an entrepreneurial mindset could bring to communities and saw a unique way to engage stakeholders through their public libraries. Spurred on by his new passion, Duncan wrote a blog post illustrating how public libraries are perfectly suited for entrepreneurial learning and activity. Read Now
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Driving Engagement & Innovation in Government
May 3, 2018
(updated on 4/9/2019) Declining Government Employee Engagement Employee engagement is a significant challenge for government agencies. In fact, employee engagement is lower in public sectors than in private sectors. And, while 71% of state and local government employees are not engaged in their work, 17% of those employees are actively disengaged, working against the mission of the organization. Actively disengaged employees are more likely to miss work, quit their job, have more accidents, and…
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Creating the Societies of the Future
December 12, 2017
ELI Founder Gary Schoeniger keynoted the Junior Achievement Europe 2017 Annual Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the conference theme was “Investing in Europe’s Transformers through Education & Innovation.” Conference organizers conducted the interview below with Schoeniger: 1. How can societies create “new” people who can solve new challenges and have a happy life? Big thinkers around the world have begun to recognize the need to encourage and support entrepreneurship education as a change agent necessary for…
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Can Government Workers Learn to Think Like Entrepreneurs?
August 30, 2017
(Updated 4/9/2019 to reflect the current number of city employees that have been through the program) If you’re like most people, the word entrepreneurial is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of government employees. For many, the word ‘bureaucrat’ is often used as a derisive term to describe government workers who may be seen as lazy, unthinking, and unproductive. And, recent Gallup research seems to confirm some disturbing facts: unhappy state…
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Mapping E-ship into Organizational DNA
August 25, 2017
The World Economic Forum states the need to move entrepreneurship from the perimeter to the core of education. Yet, all too often, we see entrepreneurship on the perimeter housed in business departments as a certificate or degree that requires the self-selection of students. At the same time, the term entrepreneurship is widely misunderstood and not relatable to most. To move entrepreneurship from the perimeter to the core, we need to redefine the term in…
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Redesigning Higher Education to Serve the Student
June 22, 2017
Students hire colleges and universities in order to make progress in their lives, but is higher education fulfilling the job to be done? In his book Competing Against Luck, Clayton Christensen presents “jobs theory” and the need to identify the job customers are hiring you to do in order for them to make progress in their lives. The customer does not hire the product or service, but rather the experience that enables them to make the progress they…
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Shifting Entrepreneurship from the Perimeter to the Core
May 31, 2017
As a guest writer for the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation in South Africa, ELI Founder Gary Schoeniger shares how a new framework will be required in order to move entrepreneurship from the perimeter to the core of the way education operates. Entrepreneurship has never been more important than it is today. Academic, business, government, and nonprofit leaders around the world have begun to recognize entrepreneurship education as essential for creating the societies of the future.…
Read moreAn Entrepreneurial Mindset for Student Success
May 31, 2016
Student engagement is a growing challenge for many community colleges as funding models shift from access to completion. Meanwhile, as the skills gap widens, employers are increasingly demanding a workforce with innovative and entrepreneurial attitudes and skills. The key to meeting these complex challenges is to equip students with an entrepreneurial mindset at the onset of their academic journey.
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