This year’s USASBE conference, a gathering of hundreds of the best experiential entrepreneurship instructors from around the world, was a harrowing one for us.

We survived a strep throat breakout, an unimaginably poorly timed dead laptop, an all-nighter prepping exercise kits, and lost luggage.

Despite the challenges, or perhaps because of them, this was our favorite conference yet. We shared, we learned, and we got energized to improve our product and process to provide you and your students more value.

This year we:

• Had 100+ people show up to our TeachingEntrepreneurship.org Happy Hour,
• Interviewed Steve Blank, the godfather of evidence-based entrepreneurship,
• Ran three sessions, featuring experiential entrepreneurship exercises from our ExEC curriculum,
• and the highlight….

We won the Excellence in Entrepreneurial Exercises (3E) competition!

Winning the 3E competition is the highest achievement an entrepreneurship exercise designer can win – the Super Bowl for entrepreneurial pedagogy nerds (that’s us!).

This win isn’t about lower-case us (Justin, Federico, Doan and the rest of the TeachingEntrepreneurship.org team). It is about US – the first version of this exercise was inspired by our work with you, the TeachingEntrepreneurship.org community.

This award is recognition for the work we all do, for the feedback and engagement you have generously provided over the past few years.

The recognition is not an arrival point, but is validation we are on the right track, and an inflection point to co-create even more value for our students.

After winning the 3E competition, Justin and Federico quickly turned their attention (until 4am!) to assembling curriculum kits for our happy hour.

Despite just three hours of sleep, Justin (we call him The Champ!) brought his full high-fiving, chair-jumping energy to the competition the next morning, presenting our Toothbrush Design Challenge with an unparalleled passion that inspired the audience and judges. It was a sight to behold.

 

We also sat down for an hour-long, 1-on-1 interview with Steve Blank on the future of entrepreneurship education.

Thanks to your questions, we had a fantastic conversation that covered:

• the ideal class an entrepreneurship major should include,
• the weaknesses of customer development and Lean Startup,
• the academic research around Lean Startup, and
• how to balance exposing students to the harsh realities of entrepreneurship, while still making entrepreneurial skills accessible to all students

Click here for the full video as soon as it’s released!

And of course, we had a wonderful time hosting happy hour on Friday night. We celebrated our collective success, and enjoyed demoing some new ExEC lesson plans:

Thank you, for supporting us, for challenging us, and for sharing our passion with your students and colleagues. Our success doesn’t happen without you!

Florida was an amazing host, but we’re already planning for next year’s USASBE conference in New Orleans. We hope you join us!

If you want to introduce your students to the #1 Experiential Entrepreneurship Exercise, request a preview of ExEC here