• Public Entrepreneurship

    Educating public leaders and private entrepreneurs
    who invent a difference in the world.

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    What will you invent?

    Do you want to solve the world's biggest problems? Invent new products and services for the world's largest customers? Or lead them?

     

    Public entrepreneurship is an alternative, inventive approach for leading change in public realms. This course is designed for future private entrepreneurs and public leaders who want to build new ventures operating in or selling into traditionally public domains.

     

    The last few years have seen a wave of new public entrepreneurs start companies that sell to government or directly to citizens and growing interest in these companies by venture funds and other investors.

     

    Collaborating with them are Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Data Officers, CIO's, CTO's, Chiefs of Staff, elected officials and other public leaders transforming government.

     

    And supporting these public entrepreneurs are the ecosystem partners making impact investments in this space, training technologists to work in it, and providing accelerator and incubator opportunities for startup-efforts.

     

    The course helps students evaluate and prepare for careers as public entrepreneurs across all three sectors.

    Fall 2019 Case Lineup

    What will you teach & learn?

    Public entrepreneurs build something from nothing with resources - be they technologies or financial capital or human talent or new rules - they don't command. Public entrepreneurs lead private companies or government. In both cases, they borrow from the skills, strategies, and cultures of private entrepreneurship, and adapt those best practices into contexts with high levels of public engagement and scrutiny, unique political opportunities and risks, and diverse and often entrenched stakeholders.

     

    The course looks at these special contexts and encourages students to see them as potential obstacles, but when addressed creatively, as potential drivers of value and progress as well. The course encourages students to see the unique problems of public entrepreneurship as opportunities. 

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    Inventors and builders from public and private ventures.

    As always, it's the students that bring the life to class. They've arrived with a strong mix of private and public experiences, in tech-related ventures and more broadly. Before graduate school, they had started their own ventures and worked inside big organizations on new projects. Several were already on to their next big thing.

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    Cases that cross sectors and the globe.

    The cases we've used get our conversations going on the big questions: Who are public entrepreneurs? What's the opportunity of public entrepreneurship? What are the right business models? Who should we partner with and how should we rely on the public? What do we think of regulatory "forgiveness" strategies vs regulatory permission? How can we sell and buy with speed?

  • Mitchell Weiss

    Mitch Weiss is a Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School, where he is a faculty member of the Entrepreneurial Management unit. He created and teaches the school's course on Public Entrepreneurship—on public leaders and private entrepreneurs who invent a difference in the world. He also teaches The Entrepreneurial Manager. His research interests in addition include digital transformation, peer production, innovation ecosystems, and relationship-based leadership. He was a 2015 recipient of the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching and a Greenhill Award recipient for 2015-2016.  

     

    Prior to joining HBS in 2014, Mitch was Chief of Staff and a partner to Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino. Mitch helped shape New Urban Mechanics, Boston’s municipal innovation strategy, and make it a model for peer-produced government and change. He also championed Boston’s Innovation District as a regional platform for entrepreneurship and growth.

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