Monday, March 21, 2016Hosted by the HBS Club of Charlotte
Join the HBS Club of Charlotte
Innovation-driven Entrepreneurship: Charlotte's Challenge and Opportunity
Program participants will preview the first in-depth assessment of Charlotte's innovation and entrepreneurship results compared to benchmark metros such as Austin and Atlanta.
Participants will also have an opportunity to suggest strategies to strengthen the region's capacity for innovation and entrepreneurial action.
When
MONDAY
MAR. 21, 2016
From 5:30pm to 8:30pm
Where
PORTAL BUILDING - UNC CHARLOTTE
9319 Robert D. Snyder Rd.
Charlotte, NC
Program Description
Program participants will preview the first in-depth assessment of Charlotte's innovation and entrepreneurship results compared to benchmark metros such as Austin and Atlanta. The Impact of Innovation: Charlotte Entrepreneur Growth Report will be publicly released later in March. You will hear report highlights including a survey of high-growth entrepreneurs and regional outcomes for academic R&D, patents, business formation, and early-stage investments. You will leave with an understanding of Charlotte innovation-driven entrepreneurship strengths, and significant deficiencies. And, you will know the two changes that would be worth $500 million annually to metro Charlotte.
Participants will have an opportunity to suggest strategies to strengthen the region's capacity for innovation and entrepreneurial action.
You will be inspired by a brief introduction to Nona, a UNC Charlotte student company. Nona's automated personal knitting machine was highlighted in Forbes following their January pitch at a competition of 15 university student teams organized by Mark Cuban in Los Angeles.
The program will be in UNC Charlotte's dramatic new PORTAL building. If you have not visited yet, you will want to see where academia, corporations, and entrepreneurs are collaborating in new ways.
Guest Speaker
Paul Wetenhall is president of Ventureprise, Inc., a regional non-profit venture development organization affiliated with UNC Charlotte, and the principal author of Charlotte Entrepreneur Growth Report. Ventureprise operates an innovation center and a student business incubator in UNC Charlotte's PORTAL building. It offers the only National Science Foundation funded I-Corps commercialization program at any university in the Carolinas. In his early career, Paul was co-founder of a venture capital funded software firm that commercialized Palo Alto Research Center technology and served in management roles for Xerox Corporation. He currently serves on the North Carolina University Innovation Council.
Paul Wetenhall is an engineering graduate of Georgia Tech and he earned an MBA from UNC Chapel Hill. He is happily married to HBS graduate Kathy Pearce.
