Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are famous for their rivalry, but a new program hopes to plant the seeds for collaboration between potential entrepreneurs at the two schools.
Social Entrepreneur and Enterprise Development for Students, a group consisting of aspiring entrepreneurs from both Duke and UNC, aims to pool the schools' resources in order to facilitate social entrepreneurship groups at both schools.
Senior Caroline Whistler, a co-founder of the project and a Robertson Scholar, said that Duke and UNC are good partners because they have "individual strengths that can build upon each other." Such advantages include Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and UNC's undergraduate business program.
"SEEDS seeks to link student social entrepreneurs to the broader entrepreneurship community to help them build long-lasting, high-impact social enterprises," said Mark Laabs, a 2006 UNC graduate and co-founder of the project.
Laabs, a former Robertson Scholar, said the project will provide a collection of electronic resources and develop relationships with non-profit organizations in order to make students' efforts more effective.
SEEDS also hopes to connect students with other entrepreneurs through workshops, guest speakers and mentoring.
"One of the reasons that social ventures are successful is that people have really good mentors," said Joel Thomas, who is also a 2006 UNC graduate and SEEDS co-founder. "Essentially, [we] want to start holding monthly dinners so people actually meet each other."
Thomas added that SEEDS aims to make interested students aware of lectures on entrepreneurship and encourage students to take academic classes at the other university. The group has already held interest meetings on both campuses.
"We have this incredibly motivated undergraduate and graduate population who are increasingly interested in social ventures," he said. "Right now we are in the stage of selecting student leadership at both universities."
SEEDS' founders discussed the project with administrators from both schools Aug. 31, Whistler said.
Laabs said SEEDS' founders have also met with representatives from UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Fuqua School of Business. He added, however, that SEEDS' target group is undergraduates and non-MBA graduate and professional students who currently do not have the access to social entrepreneurship resources that MBA students have.
"Students will have the power to implement their ideas and the power to follow through," Whistler said. "If we increase these resources, students will have the opportunity to really do something at the undergraduate level instead of waiting until graduation."
Laabs said SEEDS' founders are also working with several social entrepreneurship organizations, including StartingBloc, a group that runs entrepreneurial leadership conferences. The founders met last spring at the organization's Institute for Social Innovation conference in Boston. Laabs added that SEEDS hopes to collaborate with StartingBloc to create a Southern Institute in December 2008.
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