Students and Businesses Team Up in Entrepreneurship Clinic

Students graduating into today’s workplace need to have the skills and habits of mind to think and act entrepreneurially. NC State’s Entrepreneurship Clinic is adopting an innovative approach to getting students in nearly two dozen different majors ready to succeed.

The Entrepreneurship Clinic integrates research, teaching and real-world experience by providing a place where faculty, students, entrepreneurs and service providers go to teach, learn and build the next generation of businesses in Raleigh. Housed in HQ Raleigh, one of the region’s largest co-working hubs with more than 300 new ventures, the Clinic immerses students in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Much like a medical student observing and learning from a surgeon in an operating room, clinicians observe and learn from startup founders.

NC State students work in the Entrepreneurship Clinic.

NC State graduate Samuel Shain is an Entrepreneurship Clinician. He says he has gained first-hand experience pitching to company executives and crafting reports and business plans. The guest lecturers from outside companies made the learning process more fulfilling to him.

“The Clinic has exposed me to what collaboration in the workplace resembles,” said Shain. “I’m grateful for the existence of an initiative on campus that prepares students for the realities of post-graduate employment in a truly exceptional manner.”

The Clinic provides courses and practice for both undergraduate and graduate students across many disciplines, including business, engineering, design, textiles, agriculture, and computer science. Students form diverse teams, based on the best mix of strengths, and serve as clinicians to partner companies – early stage startups, scaling businesses and established companies – that apply to the Entrepreneurship Clinic with specific business issues and needs.

“The Clinic benefits the larger community by pairing bright young minds eager to contribute to today’s workforce with some of the toughest challenges in a myriad of industries,” said Shain. “Since the majority of the companies and start-ups the Clinic partners with are local, NC State Entrepreneurship Clinicians are generating a tangible positive impact that can be felt by the NC State community, fellow entrepreneurs in the Triangle, and the Raleigh community-at-large.”

Student Success
Since launching in January 2015 with just nine students, the Clinic has grown over four years to include 777 students representing 22 majors. During the four years, students have completed 324 projects for companies based out of nine states and clocked in over 44,000 project development hours.

The Clinic is made up of students taking the course for credit and volunteer hours spanning across NC State’s campus – from Poole College of Management, College of Textiles, College of Engineering, College of Design and the Jenkins MBA Program.

Graduating students leave with an expansive network, hands-on experience and skill development, and better concept—ultimately making them better entrepreneurs, team-members on startups, or employees for entrepreneurial-minded companies. The clinic has a mentor program for interested students where mentors and mentees self-select based on mutual interests and compatibility and meet at extracurricular events in a social setting.

“Since the majority of the companies and start-ups the Clinic partners with are local, NC State Entrepreneurship Clinicians are generating a tangible positive impact that can be felt by the NC State community, fellow entrepreneurs in the Triangle, and the Raleigh community-at-large.”

Samuel Shain, Entrepreneurship Clinician

Economic Engagement
The Clinic engages more than 40 startups and small businesses each semester and has four active recurring engagements with Fortune 500 companies, including Wells Fargo. Student teams meet with company applicants, evaluate their weaknesses, and develop and execute a strategic action plan to help them solve a specific business need. In addition, since 2015, the Clinic has launched 17 student startups and raised over $5.6 million in outside funding to assist with student startups. 

Recognition
The Clinic received the 2018 Excellence in Co-Curricular Innovation Award from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). The award recognizes the Clinic’s innovative approach: serving as a classroom for experiential learning, a physical space where students can execute on their ideas, a locus of interaction between the university and area startups, and a practical research lab for data collection. In 2017 the Clinic received the USASBE Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Program Award.

The Entrepreneurship Clinic was a significant factor in The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine’s inclusion of NC State University as one of its “Top Undergraduate Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies for 2019.” NC State came in at No. 11 on the list as the top school in the state of North Carolina.