These past 5 days have been a hectic first week of school. However, there was one class that stuck out: IEOR 190C - Entrepreneurship & Innovation: Web 2.0.

The goal of this 1 unit class is to have students (mainly engineers) come up with a business plan, and, if they want, implement it. The lecturer, Bernt Wahl, is a great motivational speaker and definitely has some great stories. Being a scientist himself, he couldn’t help but give business majors a hard time, “What? MBA? People actually go to school for that kind of stuff?” Other the other hand, he does also teach MBA courses.

So what does it take to be an entrepreneur? From Wahl’s point of view, what one really needs is passion. Most likely, there will be more failures and successes on your journey of startup-ing. Don’t focus on the money, but on changing the world.

He also believes that everyone should start early. The great thing about college kids is that we don’t know our limits. We are naive in that way. We don’t know much about business, but we don’t really care. If you’re passionate, just do it.

Most of the time, engineering students are stuck in labs, implementing strict specifications. I think the class is a great way to get engineers thinking creatively. Fun projects have resulted from this class. One example is Brainfall, once receiving 300K uniques at its prime. Next week, Doug Englebart, inventor of the mouse, is coming to guest lecture. Sweet!

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