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Friday, November 28, 2008
Corporate execs: Mentor a student to become tomorrow's leader
MHT managing editor Rodney Brown on NECN: 22 tech companies give back to community
In their own words: Tech Citizenship award recipient Neil Fennessey, CEO, Four Mangos Inc.
In their own words: Tech Citizenship award recipient Bill Shander, CEO, Beehive Media
I was a student at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College with an idea on a napkin, but no clue of how to turn it into a business.
It was one of those pie-in-the-sky ideas that some of us with a liberal arts background are capable of dreaming up: How to influence policy based on the popular opinion of the people, and how to get real-time results on that opinion directly via the web to influence those in charge.
This idea almost got away. My colleagues and I were passionate about the concept, but needed a lot of help to build a website and a company on little money or experience. Today, thanks to an unlikely corporate ally, IBM Corp., our idea is now a full-fledged startup business called Openvote Inc., with thousands of devoted Facebook followers who poll each other daily on topics ranging from campus controversies to politics to religious beliefs.
A year after first proposing our idea, we’ve grown out of our Dartmouth digs and relocated to Boston’s high-tech corridor. We’ve also retooled our website with more user-friendly technology. Now we’re hopeful that companies seeking insights into the mind-set of the “Millennial” generation will use our growing influence with Facebook users (especially college students) to test their ideas with tomorrow’s consumers, business leaders and policy-makers.
Our initial success underscores why relationships between established market leaders and startups are becoming more and more necessary. From our interactions with industry leaders, we’ve learned it is a crucial and rare combination of vision, business-savvy and technical skills that can make or break a business plan.
This is why I’d like to offer large companies some suggestions on how they can bank on the future generation’s ability to take today’s challenges and turn them into tomorrow’s business opportunities.
First and foremost, work closer with universities to better understand how your company can be involved in giving educators and students an opportunity to learn about what’s needed in the industry. It’s not enough to set up a recruiting table on campus anymore. Talented employees can act as ambassadors to the local academic community — volunteering, teaching part-time or guest lecturing. If your company has developed a specialty in an emerging field, such as 3-D Internet, imagine how exposing students today could help spark a new generation of experts tomorrow.
Secondly, don’t view schools merely as target markets for sales. Instead, sponsor networking or other events that have a real focus on sharing knowledge, and then make sure your top leaders are there to meet with students. If it weren’t for IBM presenting their vision of Web 2.0 at Dartmouth, that napkin would have landed in the trash.
Finally, offer not only internships but also mentorships to students, whether they are studying technology today or not. Internships are the best way to ready students for the workplace, however, mentorships can help them grow a balance of business and technical skills necessary to compete in today’s job market or come up with the “next big idea.”
I founded Openvote with an interest in politics and youth, and we were fortunate to have a company such as IBM take us under its wing. And companies, trust me, there are many more students out there just like us ready to be taken under your wing.
Jason Freedman, who graduated with an MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in 2008 and a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 2002, co-founded and runs Openvote, a student polling application on Facebook. More information can be found at www.open-vote.com.
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