February 19,
2007
Vice Provost Moore sees ‘exciting
opportunity’ for entrepreneurship
Duncan Moore, the new vice provost for entrepreneurship
It’s an impressive resume by all standards.
Duncan Moore has started two high-tech businesses, served as associate
director for technology in the White House during the Clinton
Administration, led the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the
College as dean, and directed the University’s Institute of Optics.
His credentials are not the only factors that make him
the right choice for vice provost for entrepreneurship, a post he assumed
in January. Moore says it is his enthusiasm for what lies ahead.
“I’m ever optimistic. I see this as an
exciting opportunity to blend my background in engineering with both social
and economic entrepreneurship, and also to raise the profile of
entrepreneurship within the University community,” says Moore, who is
the Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Professor of Optical Engineering, professor
of biomedical engineering, and professor of business administration.
Provost Charles Phelps agrees that Moore is uniquely
qualified for the appointment.
“Professor Moore personally embeds the
characteristics of entrepreneurship in many ways, including academic
leadership, the formation and scientific leadership of several successful
companies, and his role setting science and technology policy in the
Clinton White House,” says Phelps.
As director of the newly formed University Center for
Entrepreneurship, Moore is accelerating interaction among schools and
departments on the agenda supported by a $3.5 million grant from the Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation. With matching funds, the amount has reached
$10.5 million to make entrepreneurship an integral part of courses and
programs across all six schools. He hopes to channel his optimism into
results, and guide efforts to make the University a “living
laboratory” for entrepreneurial learning, research, and endeavor.
“The Kauffman grant has given the University a
wonderful opportunity to transform the way entrepreneurship is nurtured and
studied. The next step will be to envision what entrepreneurship will look
like post Kauffman and to plan for the future,” says Moore.
To guide growth over the next few years, Moore will
convene a University-wide advisory council of students, faculty, alumni,
and local leaders. That council will work directly with a governing board
made up of deans from all six schools. Moore’s role is to act as a
liaison between the two groups and to make connections between the work
happening in each school and the broader community.
An example of that effort is the Kauffman
Entrepreneurial Year or KEY program that offers College students a fifth,
tuition-free year for the purpose of entrepreneurial educational
enrichment. Moore hopes to make the program more robust by increasing the
number of students involved and by connecting those students to mentors
within the University and the region. The goal, says Moore, is to motivate
students to stay in Rochester beyond graduation.
“There’s so much discussion about the
aftereffects of downsizing by Kodak and Xerox. While the local economy has
weathered the changes fairly well, I think one of the most dramatic effects
has been the loss of 20- and 30-somethings who were recruited here by those
two industry giants,” says Moore.
“I used to say that to start a business you
should have 10 to 15 years experience so that you have a strong
professional network. But the reality is that by the time you have that
experience, you also may have a spouse, mortgage, car payment, and
children. Your downside risk is enormous. On the other hand, a 22-year-old
has about zero downrisk because he or she has been on negative cash flow
for a while. More importantly, they do not believe in failure and are not
risk adverse. That’s why it is so important to attract them to
Rochester and to keep them here.”
To help connect KEY students to a local network of
professionals and investors, Moore has proposed the idea of having program
participants form a board of directors that will consist of one person from
the selection committee, a faculty member at the University, and two other
people in the local community related to the student’s field of
interest.
In addition, Moore plans to develop two lines of
entrepreneurial study: social and business creation. He says one of the
next steps will be to examine the curriculum and identify an approach that
will work best here, including options such as degrees, minors,
clusters, and certificates in entrepreneurship.
He also will be looking at new opportunities that have
developed since the Kauffman grant proposal, such as the $15 million WIRED
funding from the U.S. Department of Labor for economic development in the
nine-county region surrounding Rochester. A portion of the money is
targeted for entrepreneurial and educational initiatives.
“There’s been a certain convergence of
entrepreneurship here,” says Moore. “One of my goals is to
figure out how we can leverage all these opportunities. We’ve had a
pretty good hand dealt to us, so we’ve got to make sure that we play
it as effectively as we can.”
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