By Mary Whitfill, editor-in-chief
In an attempt to connect business-savvy students across fields, Global Week (GEW) will wrap up tonight with its biggest event, NEXPO, a university-wide exhibition used to showcase student ventures and connect innovators with alumni and accelerator programs. Hosted by the Center for Entrepreneurship Education (CEE) and sponsored by student-lead entrepreneurship organizations, GEW featured speakers, workshops and panels throughout the week.
“NEXPO is the culmination of everything that is happening in Northeastern’s entrepreneurship ecosystem right now,” Nick Naraghi, senior finance major and CEO of IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator, said. “With alumni, faculty and student entrepreneurs, the leaders of our student organizations and university programs and hundreds of attendees from the Boston area, it is an awesome opportunity to show off Northeastern as a serious force in the world of innovation. It’s also an opportunity for companies and projects to meet potential investors, partners, co-founders and employees.”
NEXPO will serve as a showcase for student and alumni ventures, as well as a networking platform for student entrepreneurs to connect with fellow business-minded people. The event, held in the Cabot Center, is open to entrepreneurs across the board, from professionals looking to dish out advice, to students who are in the beginning stages of fostering an idea.
“The idea is that we can engage students who are already currently involved and kind of offer some things to educate them about other opportunities, and then ideally to showcase what we are doing and hope to inform new members of the Northeastern community that may not know about the cool ventures we have,” Lauren Dibble, manager of marketing and mentor programs for CEE, said. “We are very, very excited about NEXPO, it is such a big deal. It is all of Northeastern’s ventures… it is meant to be the ultimate way to highlight everything that is happening and celebrate global innovation.”
Earlier in the week, CEE hosted an entrepreneurship and innovation research seminar, featuring Professors P. Devereaux (Dev) and Jennifer Jennings from the University of Alberta School of Business. Laura Benedict, a third-year work study in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group within the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, attended the event and spoke to the benefits of GEW as a whole.
“I think it’s an incredible opportunity for Northeastern to showcase its groundbreaking leadership in the field as one of the leading centers for social entrepreneurship in the country,” Benedict, an international affairs and economics major with a minor in social entrepreneurship, said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for new professors to showcase their work in the space, and also to showcase student achievements in the field.”
GEW, a worldwide movement in 125 countries, is designed to help people explore their potential as self-starters and innovators. Although Northeastern has participated in the program since 2008, this is only the second year CEE has spearheaded the management of the events CEE was created in 2012 as part of the $5 million donation investment made to the business school by alumnus Alan McKim and serves as a channel for entrepreneurial-minded students.
“CEE supports all of the student-lead entrepreneurship groups and all of the entrepreneurship classes for the minor with funds and with investors to help us hit the next milestone,” IDEA Communications Officer Ben Bungert said. “They really do open the doors for us to create and foster business relationships.”
The CEE faculty board consists of professors and other NU faculty members from various programs in the university, including representatives of engineering, music, biology, computer science and more.
“We keep trying to to push entrepreneurship as something not just for business [students],” Bungert said. “Anyone can be an entrepreneur and anyone can be an innovator, so we celebrate anyone that has an idea they want to express or a passion they want to follow in their own field. Just because the entrepreneurship minor is housed in the business school doesn’t mean it’s just for business students.”
The Center supports students using a three-fold structure, aiming to educate entrepreneurs, incubate ventures and launch successful businesses. CEE offers classes, bootcamps for alumni, speaker series and other opportunities beyond traditional classroom learning, according to Dibble.
“The piece that excites me the most is the ‘incubate’ piece,” Dan Gregory, co-director of CEE, said. “We have students heavily engaged in actually running that function. Student-lead IDEA, student-lead SCOUT… even engineering and computer science are talking about all the different ways students can get involved. It’s not just a bunch of staff helping students, it is a really rich peer-to-peer exchange.”
After an idea has been “incubated,” CEE provides mentors and helps to create an investor network in the “launch” part of the program.
“Obviously Northeastern places a big premium on experiential education and most of that is around co-op, but this is sort of a middl tier of experiential education,” Gregory said. “The experience that trying to start your own venture while you are still in classes, or on co-op, creates this middle tier of experience for entrepreneurs which is very, very unusual. The students are really coming to grips with the challenges of building enterprises.”
Photo by Arzu Martinez