The University is positioned as the ultimate knowledge factory of the mankind. Not a bad place to be, in a world where knowledge – not cash – increasingly is king. However, the sometimes compromised relationship between theory and practice is increasingly underscored in the context of business creation, in general, and Business School, in particular. To bring about change, brave new initiatives are required to enable and encourage more engaging scholarly roles and more practically relevant research missions and outcomes. For the future of management, the needs are perhaps the most profound in the context of entrepreneurship and innovation: Commercialization, business creation and launch of global growth ventures.

Business Schools have, over several decades, turned into well functioning ecosystems. They efficiently produce Masters of Business Administration to the established managerial requirements of large corporations. Due to the efficiency of their prevailing routines, only incremental changes – instead of giant leaps forward – can be reasonably expected from even from the best of them. Descriptively, many of the world’s leading universities run major business creation experiments outside their renowned Business School: Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) of Stanford University and Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (CET) of UC Berkeley as star examples.

In the words of a renowned scientist colleague: “Building business is no rocket science”. Indeed, in our words, it is more complicated than that. Rocket science is connecting “compatible dots” under the rationality and logic of natural science, Building business increasingly involves connecting “incompatible dots”: Systems far more complicated than in rocket science, namely human beings – “minds and matter” – and all this across vast cultural and physical barriers. To give an example, JYU has built a profile in Human Technology, having already succeeded in the combination of humanities and technology, two extremely different fields of academic tradition. Add business (creation), and you might have a winning recipe.

There is call for ever more deeply interdisciplinary foundations within the academia, both in research and education, with ever more intimate – bolder, deeper, and ever more creative – interaction with practitioners of both established and emerging companies. Such new programs are under way in several universities around the world.

WORKING ON A GLOBAL SOLUTION: THE NEED FOR GLOBAL VENTURE LAB

Global Venture Lab (GVL) builds on the need for “Human Technology Business”: The growing need to connect (or integrate) humanities and technology with business. While GVL’s founding partners each run such initiatives on local level, they envision co-creating a truly global university program or a “Business Creation School”. The founders share a deep concern for Big Problems and a passion to solve them by the means of growth venturing – by using the vehicle value of corporations in the global free enterprise system.

GLOBAL- think boundaryless

•    bringing local innovations to global markets
•    collaborating with international faculty & university institutions
•    cutting across cultures, disciplines of science & sectors of economy

VENTURE - think of business

•    focusing on individuals with intention to grow a business to its maximal market potential
•    networked with dedicated serial entrepreneurs around Finland & the world
•    investing knowledge (committed competence), not just money

LAB - think of co-creation

•    bringing entrepreneurs into university and students & researchers into the business world
•    focus on commercialization as science – not just a practice
•    side by side learning, studying and executing of business creation, real life, real time, for real profits

For problems worth solving

We’re facing major global challenges that are in need of bright minds, young and old, that are willing and able to push for solutions. Global Venture Lab promotes growth venturing for sustainability - that is, creating profit-driven, growth-oriented and knowledge-invested businesses that serve a purpose deeper yet than wealth creation, namely solution creation for problems worth solving.