The Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University is ranked No. 3 in Poets & Quants’ World’s Best MBA Programs for Entrepreneurship rankings for 2022, up from No. 15 on the 2021 list.

Poets & Quants created the annual rankings with Inc. Magazine to measure schools' performance in providing launching pads for entrepreneurial-minded MBA students. Through data collection and analysis, the list ranked 38 schools based on 16 core metrics that reflect not only the resources devoted to entrepreneurship, but also the results of those efforts.

The Rice entrepreneurship ecosystem combines academic courses and co-curricular programs led by the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) with community and co-curricular programs of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (Rice Alliance). Student founders begin their entrepreneurial journey in the more than 50 courses and experiential learning labs offered through Lilie.
 

“The ability to be a student while working on your startup in class, under the expert guidance of our world-class faculty, gives our Rice entrepreneurs a competitive advantage over any others out there,” said Yael Hochberg, head of the Rice Entrepreneurship Initiative and academic director for the Rice Alliance.

Student entrepreneurs further develop their ventures through Lilie’s suite of experiential programs, using resources such as a state-of-the-art coworking space, equity-free funding and mentorship to accelerate their ventures — culminating with the Napier Rice Launch Challenge each spring.

These programs are augmented by the Rice Alliance’s OwlSpark Accelerator, which serves as a capstone program and launchpad for students seeking to start their companies. The Rice Business Plan Competition, the largest and richest intercollegiate student startup competition in the world, provides an opportunity to pitch their startups in front of over 300 judges for more than $1.5 million in prizes. The Rice Alliance Technology Venture Forums provide an opportunity for students to showcase their startups to investors and corporations.

“The ability for students to launch their nascent startups, obtain mentoring from members of the Houston entrepreneurial ecosystem and then pitch to hundreds of angel investors, venture capitalists and corporations provides a unique opportunity that cannot be found on many campuses or in many regions,” said Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance.

“Our mission of creating entrepreneurship programs that are led by experienced founders and investors, underpinned by rigorous research and teaching expertise, is beginning to pay dividends in Lilie’s sixth year as the entrepreneurship center for Rice Business and the campus,” Hochberg said. “It’s increasingly clear that there’s no better time than now to learn and explore entrepreneurship as a student, and no better place than here at Rice Business.”

For more information on Rice Entrepreneurship, visit entrepreneurship.rice.edu or email the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at lilie@rice.edu or Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship at alliance@rice.edu.

Jack Gill, a Rice Business professor, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, received a Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers Legacy Award at the group's 25th annual conference.

The Legacy Award — which has been bestowed upon only 13 people — celebrates the pioneering work of the world’s top university-based entrepreneurship leaders. Gill, professor of the practice of entrepreneurship at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business, was honored for his decades-long commitment to entrepreneurship education and passion for supporting and mentoring students.

In Gill’s 20 years of teaching at Rice, more than 5,000 students and more than 150 guest speakers from the entrepreneurial and venture capital worlds have taken part in his courses. His boot camps have included participants from more than 25 universities.

His Life Science Entrepreneurship course was one of the first Rice Business opened to any graduate student on campus or at any of the Texas Medical Center (TMC) institutions. It strongly encourages networking and directly led to the formation of Enventure, a group that provides vital education, networking and support to aspiring life science entrepreneurs in the Houston region.

“In addition to supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs in his role as a venture capitalist, perhaps his greatest legacy as a supporter of entrepreneurship has been as a professor of practice at numerous universities and as a tireless mentor to thousands of young entrepreneurs in university settings,” said Steven Currall, founding director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and former president of the University of South Florida.

Gill co-founded GOOSE Capital (formerly the GOOSE Society of Texas) in 2005 and grew the organization from six founding members to 25. The group of super-angel investors provided the grand prize at the first Rice Business Plan Competition, hosted by the Rice Alliance, helping it become the world’s largest and richest student startup competition.

Since 1997, the Linda and Jack Gill Foundation of Texas has donated more than $40 million to educational institutions and scholarship programs.

“We could not have asked for a more engaging, experienced, successful and talented professor of the practice in entrepreneurship and we thank Jack for all that he has given to Rice, the Jones School and all the local TMC institutions,” said Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business.

In addition to Rice, Gill has served as an adjunct faculty member, lecturer and instructor at Indiana University, MIT, Harvard Medical School and Lamar University.

The world’s premier university-based entrepreneurship institutes and leaders were celebrated at the 25th annual Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) Conference.

The Baltimore conference, hosted by Loyola University Maryland and the University of Baltimore on Oct. 13-16, showcased higher education’s role in supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs who have been most affected by economic crises and hold the most potential for growth. The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship at the Jones Graduate School of Business is the administrative home for the GCEC.

More than 500 people attended in person or virtually to hear more than 70 breakout sessions and keynotes from Marcus Bullock, founder of Flikshop; Nnadagi Isa and Louise Isa, founders of Lor Tush; Philip Gaskin, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation; Ryan Maliszewski, chief executive officer at Mozzeria; and Allysa Dittmar, co-founder of ClearMask.

On Saturday, 20 centers were feted as the best of university entrepreneurship across 10 categories among more than 65 nominees. The top honor, the Nasdaq Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, traditionally goes to a single program but it was expanded this year to recognize one small university (less than 5,000 students) and one large university (more than 5,000 students). The GCEC Awards are chaired by Holly DeArmond, managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, one of the three founding schools of the GCEC.

The awardees:

Nasdaq Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence, schools with less than 5,000 students

• Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Trinity University

Nasdaq Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence, schools with more than 5,000 students

• McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship, Texas A&M University

Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Center, schools with less than 5,000 students

• Hynes Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Iona College

Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Center, schools with more than 5,000 students

• Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, Yale University
• ASPER-HUJI Innovate, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Miller School of Entrepreneurship, East Carolina University

Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation

• NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, New York University
• Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Minnesota

Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across Disciplines

• Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Colorado Boulder
• Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Elon University
• Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Texas Christian University

Excellence in Specialty Entrepreneurship Education

• Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Texas at Dallas
• NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, New York University

Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovation

• Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Indiana University
• Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Outstanding Student Engagement & Leadership, schools with less than 5,000 students

• Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program, Clark University

Outstanding Student Engagement & Leadership, schools with more than 5,000 students

• Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland
• Yazamut 360°, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Exceptional Contributions in Entrepreneurship Research

• Diana International Research Institute, Babson College

GCEC Center of Entrepreneurial Leadership

• Loyola University Maryland
• University of Baltimore

Three GCEC Legacy Awards honored individuals for pioneering work in advancing entrepreneurship at universities and/or directing a university entrepreneurship center that created a legacy impact on the field. The awards were created in 2012; to date, there have been only 13 recipients.

The winners:

• Linda Darragh, the Larry Levy Executive Director of the Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative and clinical professor of entrepreneurial practice at Northwestern University
• Jack Gill, professor of the practice of entrepreneurship at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business
• Michael Morris, professor of entrepreneurship and social innovation at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs

The GCEC is a consortium of 250 leading university entrepreneurship programs that work together to share best practices, develop programs and initiatives, and collaborate and assist each other advancing, strengthening and celebrating the role of universities in educating the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

Owl Have You Know

Charley Donaldson ’09 joins host David Droogleever to discuss how he used his MBA as a springboard into a new career, how important it is to be creative in a job, and how the pandemic has shaped the trajectory of CaringBand.

Subscribe to Owl Have You Know on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

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