What do sewing, baking and crafting have to do with the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business? A lot, it turns out. And this fall, it will be easy to see why. The spaces Entrepreneurship@DU has for years provided to creative student entrepreneurs will have an even larger, more visible presence at the College.
E@DU embraces a “cool, edgy” approach to business, encouraging students to take risks, pursue their passion projects and learn how to solve the world’s problems with forward-thinking business ideas—like sewing bras for people with asymmetrical breasts, baking granola food products with sustainable, protein-rich insect powder, and leveraging artificial intelligence to improve everything from financial investments to golf swings to psychotherapy outcomes.
Entrepreneurship is a convergence of technology, creative design and business. And properly ideating, researching, prototyping, testing, analyzing, refining and launching new endeavors requires access to materials not found in most university business schools.
But in “The Garage”—a quaint, split-level house at the corner of Asbury St. and York Ave.—E@DU bucked the trend. It spray-painted an exterior mural, fashioned coworking spaces from old living rooms, and filled bedroom closets with supplies for crafters, makers and inventors. The Garage was scrappy—a rite of passage for every startup.
E@DU will now have a distinguished spot in a reorganized Daniels College of Business, embedded within the first floor of the ivy-adorned brick building at the corner of University Blvd. and Evans Ave. It’s a location symbolic of its place in a best-in-class business curriculum, and part of Daniels Dean Naomi Boyd’s promise to disrupt business education as we know it.
In an episode of the Daniels Voices of Experience podcast last fall, Boyd spoke about her time as a professional ballerina giving her a “creative viewpoint of looking at different problems from different angles,” and how technological advancements are “changing the way in which we work and live.”
“We need to be training students to use that disruption to accelerate and advance something innovative that is outside of the box…to come in and be those thought leaders, to be those people who have those entrepreneurial spirits where they’re not afraid to try new things, but to also recognize when they are failing and it’s time to take a step back and reflect,” she said.
By fall quarter, the south wing of Daniels’ first floor will be transformed into a hub for Entrepreneurship@DU to collaborate with the Sales Leadership Center, Consumer Insights and Business Innovation Center (CiBiC), Liniger Center on Franchising, Bailey Program for Family Enterprise and the Leadership in the Outdoor Recreation Industry (LORI) program.
A business degree is no longer a means to working the same corporate job for 45 years. Gen Zers are predicted to have 16-18 jobs throughout their careers. Entrepreneurial hustles are common, whether in addition to or in place of full-time employment.
In the fast-paced, AI-driven world where most of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet, an education in entrepreneurship really is an education in the critical thinking, resilience, adaptability and emotional intelligence required to thrive in tomorrow’s business world. It’s not an offshoot from “regular” business; it’s imperative. And moving Daniels’ centers for innovation and non-traditional business ventures into the same suite in the College’s main building legitimizes it as such.
In addition to its new office, programming and student coworking spaces in the former Daniels Graduate Student Services suite, E@DU is transforming adjacent conference rooms into three new spaces:
- The Re:Make Studio was designed in partnership with the president of DU’s sewing club. Starting this fall, student entrepreneurs can use the space to sew, crochet, knit, repair and upcycle various textiles—especially important as more consumers are favoring cost- and eco-conscious thrifted clothing over fast fashion.
- The Create Studio is a makerspace for designing and printing products using Cricut machines, 3D printers and T-shirt presses. Student leaders will eventually hold drop-in makerspace instruction sessions here. Daniels’ Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management students collaborated on the architectural renderings for the space. Construction crews will knock down a dividing wall this summer to create the studio from two smaller lounges near CiBiC, to the left of the Marsico Investment Center.
- The Media Studio will take over the previous GSS lounge conference room, creating a new technology lab with cutting-edge virtual reality and AI platforms, as well as podcast and video recording/production equipment.
The goal is for students, alumni, faculty and other E@DU collaborators to use the new studios holistically for integrated, hands-on learning, instruction and innovation. Regardless of how well someone can code or crochet, they still need skills in business plans, funding sources, marketing, accounting, ethics, sustainability, people management, and more to successfully run a business and sell their products and services to the right markets.
And very soon, they’ll be able to get it—all under one roof.