THE DRUCKER INSTITUTE TO TEACH INNOVATION PRINCIPLES TO NON-BUSINESS FACULTY AS PART OF THE COLEMAN FOUNDATION FACULTY FELLOWS PROGRAM

Today, we announced that we will work with the Coleman Foundation Faculty Entrepreneurship Fellows Program to teach Peter Drucker’s core principles of innovation to university professors teaching non-business courses across the country.

These trained Coleman Foundation Faculty Fellows will then, in turn, be better positioned to teach fundamentals of entrepreneurship and self-employment to their students, who come from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, arts, engineering and social, natural, formal and applied sciences.

In all, 136 Coleman Fellows will take part in this year’s Fellows Summit in October 2013, marking the biggest class in the program’s five-year history. In its first four years, the Coleman Fellows Program has engaged nearly 200 faculty members from more than 20 U.S. colleges and universities.

“Initially entrepreneurship was often promoted on campuses by a single champion within the business school,” observed Michael Hennessy, president and CEO of the Coleman Foundation. “While it seemed obvious that many entrepreneurs did not come through traditional business programs, it was very difficult for non-business students and faculty to participate in entrepreneurship programs. Single champions faced steep challenges trying to change culture and create programs. We see the Fellows program as a means to engage faculty, promote interdisciplinary learning and provide opportunities for a broader array of students to develop knowledge, skills and their business ideas.”

Rick Wartzman, the executive director of the Drucker Institute, said he and his team were grateful for the opportunity to work with the Coleman Fellows program. “Peter Drucker taught that, properly practiced, ‘management is a liberal art,’ meaning that it should be infused with teachings from all of the humanities and sciences—history, sociology, theology, biology, psychology, philosophy, economics, the arts and more,” Wartzman noted. “This pioneering Coleman Foundation program represents the flipside of Drucker’s insight, by making clear that those in the humanities can benefit from infusing their disciplines with management concepts such as innovation and entrepreneurship.”

About the Coleman Foundation

The Coleman Foundation is a private, independent grantmaker that primarily focuses its funding in the Midwest. Entrepreneurship Education is one of the Foundation’s three program areas. Beginning in 1981, the Foundation began to question why individuals are encouraged to “get a job” rather than “create a job.” At that time, grantmaking focused on promoting and further legitimizing Entrepreneurship. Two decades of seed and program grants followed to further promote and develop the field. Today’s focus is fostering experiential activities that allow nascent entrepreneurs the opportunity to practice and develop skills needed to succeed. Grants seek to improve the quality and quantity of experiential activities across disciplines that develop applied knowledge and experiences in self-employment. As entrepreneurship continues to transcend the business school, there is significant opportunity to engage non-business students and faculty in inter-disciplinary activities. The Fellows Program seeks to: build support for entrepreneurship education in non-business departments across campuses of participating schools; advance true venture creation; and cultivate cohorts of entrepreneurship educators on individual campuses, across many disciplines.