Calling All Entrepreneurs: Your Voice Matters

Melissa Withers
November 1, 2010

The U.S. was founded on a culture of starting stuff and we must get back to our entrepreneurial roots. Our economic future is an era of entrepreneurship and current support solutions are insufficient. We need a new national entrepreneurship conversation and the voice of the entrepreneur must be at the center of it.

The Babson Entrepreneur Experience Lab puts entrepreneurs at the center of an ongoing effort to design, prototype, and test a new generation of solutions to achieve a new economic vision with entrepreneurship at its heart.

On the Lab's public portal we've launched a story booth that lets people from across the country share instant 20 second video stories about their entrepreneurial experience. We want to hear from you: Share your story now.

Why Do We Need an Entrepreneur Experience Lab?
We believe that the current entrepreneurship support system is well-intended but insufficient to stimulate entrepreneurial activity at the scale and scope we need to revive the global economy. The system needs more than a tweak—it needs a transformation.

Babson College and the Business Innovation Factory recently embarked on a new partnership to create a real world laboratory to design, develop and test new entrepreneurship support solutions and systems. The Entrepreneur Experience Lab is working to develop a deep and ongoing understanding of the entrepreneurship experience through the lens of the entrepreneur and use that understanding to create a platform to design and test new entrepreneurship solutions and systems.

In its first phase of activity, the Lab team is working with entrepreneurs from all walks of life, at all stages of development and from every region in the United States to create a first person characterization of the national entrepreneurial experience. Building on this new map of the entrepreneur experience, the team is creating a prioritized list of opportunities where the experience can be enhanced to accelerate new venture creation.

In parallel, the team also is establishing a functional lab environment where new ideas can be developed, designed and tested in real world environments. This work will lay the foundation for creating a real world laboratory for systemic experimentation, where programs and services can be developed and tested within an integrated, real world environment.

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