Key Ingredients of Entrepreneurship at Stanford

From the current issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education - Inside Startup U: How Stanford Develops Entrepreneurial Students:

• Networking and collaboration across disciplines and schools.  Embodied best by the Hasso- Plattner Institute of Design, programs and courses that cross disciplines are support by the university.  About one-quarter of students purse interdisciplinary majors.
• Close connections to industry.  Local leaders play an active role on campus, serving as instructors and mentors to students, and as collaborators with faculty members.  Stanford offers professors a two-year leave for opportunities to work in industry.
• Classes, centers, and organizations that focus on innovation.  Students can choose among dozens of offerings, both academic and applied, that build entrepreneurial skills.
• A robust liberal-arts environment.  As enrollments in engineering have grown, Stanford has sought to bolster and humanities and social sciences, too, including by creating programs such as CS+X, a joint major in computer science and a humanities field.
• Support for commercialization of research and ideas.  Established entities, like the Office of Technology Licensing, and newer ones, like StartX, a nonprofit, Stanford-affiliated business accelerator, offer faculty members, students, and alumni help with the technical and development sides of entrepreneurship.