Today, UConn undergraduate entrepreneurship is ranked 46 in the Princeton Review/Entrepreneur Magazine rankings. This measures the course output, number of students in programs and classes, as well as the success of UConn alumni and their ventures. Many different factors played into this ranking, but the members of the Werth Institute that made this ranking real.

What Does the Werth Institute Do?

People ask us this question all of the time. The snarky answer is: What day and time is it?

The true answer is that we are an umbrella institute that has over 45 different members that focus on or support entrepreneurship at UConn. We support these members in the achievement of their goals. For instance, Innovation Quest is the student idea competition that helps prepare to students to go from an idea to starting a venture. The Werth Institute does not run this program, but we provide support to help make it a better program than it would be without University level support.

A core function of that support are activities that benefit all of our members, but no one member has a reason to burden itself with the cost of that activity. A classic tragedy of commons issue that is present in most of the interesting cross-disciplinary areas of study and practice at the University. Through that line of activity, we have growing responsibility for the communication of UConn’s entrepreneurial efforts and programs. This includes the preparation of the Princeton Review Entrepreneurship Survey.

Four Pillars of Werth Members

We categorize the Werth Institute members into four categories.

• Learn
• Connect
• Create
• Explore

This allows us to consider how we interact and engage with each other and with students. If you visit the Experience Innovation Expo, you will feel the difference through the different colors.

The Princeton Review Entrepreneurship rankings primarily focuses on the Learn component through the academic majors, minors, and classes. Secondarily, the Explore component is profiled through the programs that award cash prizes are measured and compared to those at other universities as well.

Therefore, today we will take a little closer look at these two pillars: Learn & Explore.

Learn

Academic offerings come from different schools, such as Business, Engineering, Fine Arts, and Agriculture. We had over 500 students at UConn taking courses in entrepreneurship, and we expect this number to continue to rise. We now have a number of different minors that allow students easier access to entrepreneurship offerings, while this summer UConn School of Business will launch an Entrepreneurial Fundamentals Summer Program for students that want to get many of the credits related to their minor completed without having to worry about if they will have access to the courses. There are also exciting developments around partnerships with Global Affairs and Study Abroad around technology entrepreneurship.

If you are an alum wondering how you can help deliver on this mission, I would suggest you consider double dipping. Scholarship money dedicated to entrepreneurship is extremely important to the sustainability of our academic offerings and our rankings such as the Princeton Review. Furthermore, you can support students with scholarships in any School or Major. Please reach out to the Werth Institute (werth.institute@uconn.edu) if this is of interest to you.

Explore

As part of the Explore pillar, we run numerous programs that de-risk entrepreneurial endeavors for students. Providing support, mentorship, and leadership opportunities to students that are trying to bring a product to market is an essential capability for UConn. Students have all manner of ideas and opportunities that they are trying to commercialize, whether developed in a class or on their own. As students move through these programs, they require increasing levels of commitment and attention.

Students can obtain tiny amounts of money to build an early stage prototype through GetSeeded, which is a large collaborations marshalled by CCEI (a Werth Institute Member). These small funds support taking a project from nothing to something. Often times, it is the absolute first step in a student’s entrepreneurial journey at UConn. All they need is an idea to build something and a few slides in a slide deck.

Whereas, we also provide significantly greater levels of support through a multitude of programs, including the School of Engineering’s 3rd Bridge grant program. 3rd Bridge supports engineering students with more advanced technologies that require initial funding for proof of concept and market discovery. Oftentimes, the student startup is connected to research from a School of Engineering laboratory. Recent 3rd Bridge grant winners have been through MassChallenge accelerator and won the Wolff Family Prize for the top entrepreneurship team at UConn.

The next stages of support will be built out with more advanced and directed matchmaking and mentoring for teams. As the Werth Institute expands its human capital, it will focus on providing our programs with access for their student entrepreneurs to the mentors that they need to be successful. Again, if this sounds interesting to you, please reach out to our office.

What Now?

Rankings are great. A lesson any entrepreneur reading this can learn is that you should not be lulled into trusting others statements about your product. You need to keep working on your customer relationships.

If we have 500 students in entrepreneurship classes, and we have 30,000+ students at the University of Connecticut, that means we have a ways to go! The Werth Institute needs to keep working on its partnerships and collaborations that provide greater access for students to the support and education that they need to be successful employees, entrepreneurs, and grad students.

This spring we will spend a great deal of time meeting with more diverse groups on how we can help them achieve their goals. We look forward to showing up in new places, and we look forward to giving voice to underrepresented students in the entrepreneurship population. Greater inclusion and representation are key elements to the improvement of all outcomes with regard to Werth Institute members. Everything is circular, as inclusion is one of those things that makes every program better, but no one program owns inclusion.

Therefore, it is clear that there is no shortage of opportunities for growth in Entrepreneurship at UConn, but today we have the first public validation of the excellent work that Werth Institute members are doing. Excellence should be celebrated, but remember that it is a constantly moving target.

Developing engaging content is no easy task. Repeatedly, we are asked “why don’t you do this or do that?” More than once, social media has been the subject to of that question. My answer is that we do not have the capacity and capability to deliver extremely high content on a consistent manner. I think this should be the goal of all social media projects.

Over the last month, we have launched our first foray into social media with the Werth Institute’s LinkedIn page – Please Follow US!

Key to that effort was the creation of this blog, and it was kicked off with UConn School of Engineering alum and CEO of Upside Business Travel Scott Case’s first two pieces. We are confident that we can obtain thought leadership of very high quality from our collection of student, faculty, and alumni that will contribute through a process designed to capture each blog piece with a 2 hour contribution of time and knowledge. Why did we do this?

Why?

Why are we doing a blog? I always think it is important to know why you do things. Often overlooked or forgotten when organizations make decisions is the why. As a rule for any entrepreneur, knowing the why is essential. The why carries you through when you do not want to do something.

• Engagement: We are looking for ways to engage alumni in the Werth Institute process that is both enjoyable and valuable for them. Allowing alum, students, and faculty to share their expertise in an easy platform that lives beyond the initial point achieves this goal.
• Consistent Content: An editorial calendar that allows us to publish an article every two weeks guarantees that we can sustain interest in our LinkedIn page.
• Audience Generation: Every blog, podcast, website, etc. relies on audience generation from one of two sources: organic or paid. Having different authors that engage with me to create this content not only increases the touch points, but it also increases the number of shares … people are generally proud of what they contributed and will want to share that material.
• Knowledge Curation: Our faculty, students, and alum have a great deal of knowledge around technology, entrepreneurship, and finance. Curation and sharing of that knowledge benefits the readers of today, but also the most ambitious of students in the future.

The Werth Institute Thought Leader’s Blog

There is no rush to contribute, but please consider following and recommending. When you are ready to contribute a few hours over a month long time, please reach out and offer to contribute. The initial audience is UConn alum and students whom are interested in entrepreneurial activities. Proper topics include the role of entrepreneurial mindset in your career journey, subject matter expertise relevant to technology, entrepreneurship, and finance.

The process will include a recorded interview with someone (most likely me) that includes probes. We hope each interview results in 2 or 3 blog posts that can be completed over a year or two. After the recorded interview, we will have it transcribed so the author will begin to outline the particular blog piece that was unearthed. Finally, it will be completed with the help of staff on proofreading and final copy.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to do things well. If we put Werth Institute resources to work on something, we need to be outstanding. We are not afraid to take chances and fail, we just want to prioritize things that have impact on students AND we can deliver a level of excellence that equates to the Werth Institute brand.

The Werth Institute is very excited for the opportunity to engage along these goals and parameters. As we build audience, we believe that will open future content creation options.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

There is no easy way to success. Social media requires a strategy and a commitment of resources to do well. If it is a core part of your business strategy, you will need to contribute the resources, both time and money, to do it at a level of excellence that breaks through the noise. Please discuss this with an expert as you begin to launch your campaigns!

Retaining employees is hard. Retaining great employees is even harder—seemingly impossible in tight job markets. With unemployment rates at the lowest they’ve been in 50 years, you have to assume that everyone on your team is being recruited by someone else.

No matter your company’s size or stage, you’re in a battle for talent. Which means you’ll need to do what it takes to keep top employees feeling great about working on your team. Here’s how to consistently retain your workforce so that you can achieve your objectives.

Advice for startup executives

Other companies are actively attempting to woo your top employees away from your company. You need to get ahead of the challenge.

If you’re leading a startup, you need a consistent strategy to retain employees. Resources are tight, and workloads are robust—everyone is already wearing multiple hats, so making a conscious effort to make sure high performing employees are feeling good about their jobs may seem like an unnecessary burden. It’s not. It’s critical that you stay in touch with your team. Without your high performers, you’ll never be able to create momentum, grow, and scale.

If you want high performers to stick around for more than a cup of coffee, figure out what fuel they need and “feed” them. Overfeed them, in fact. Traditional perks aren’t the answer—free lunch Fridays and video game rooms or competitive health care, 401k, stock ownership plans, and competitive compensation are expected.

The truly most important thing you can do to keep top talent is to trust your people. Trust equals light speed—operate with a lean set of policies, approvals, rules, and procedures because top-down mandates hamper momentum and agility.

Your highest performing employees—your leaders—will stick around for the long haul if they feel they have the responsibility and authority to make decisions.

Here’s the short list of what they’re looking for:

• Transparency — a leader wants visibility into the entire operation. How does the P&L look this month? What positions should we be recruiting for? When employees step out of their lane, in terms of responsibility, remember to see this as a sign of investment in your company—they want to make sure you’re successful.
• Ownership — a leader admits mistakes as fast as an average employee takes credit for something they did. Celebrate when employees are honest, open, and constructive in the face of adversity. They will gain confidence and experience. Everyone will benefit.
• Challenged — a leader takes on more than they are comfortable with doing. They may not be perfect at it, but it’s better that you have employees trying harder than expected. When they mess up, help them see it as a lesson in growth. The minute you chastise a high performer, is the minute they start to wonder if there’s another job out there that’s better suited for them.

At Upside Business Travel, we strive to be transparent, treat everyone like owners, and challenge our team every day. But we still struggle to retain top talent from time to time because there are so many opportunities out there. A person having one bad week can see greener grass on the other side of the fence and jump before you know it.

Recently, I was reflecting on some retention issues from the early days of our company. I realized that I failed to reinforce our vision and our mission consistently. I let it coast. As a founder, I now know that I need to constantly put that fuel in the tank for everyone on the team. I won’t make that mistake again, and hopefully you can learn from me and avoid it for yourself.

Advice for executives at larger companies

All of the challenges facing startups apply to more established companies, and then some. To an outsider, your company may be seen as “getting old.” By that I mean the perception is that, as a larger company, you have more rules and processes in place compared to a start up.

While this may seem restrictive to some enterprising candidates, it’s important to remind them that you operate from a position of strength—you have more resources at your disposal and a broader range of opportunities within your organization for them to advance. They can literally see the career in front of them because job families are better defined than at a startup. Plus, you have brand equity, customer relationships, and products or services that are profitable.

To keep top talent at a larger, established organization, it’s your job to keep employees motivated and growing. Don’t let the stability that your proven organization provides become your Achilles’ heel. On an individual level, make sure your managers are meeting regularly with their teams, setting quarterly goals, and holding people accountable. Gradually layer on more responsibility to ensure your employees are learning and enhancing their skill-sets.

If people need tools or resources to acquire the skills needed for the next level in their career, do whatever it takes to provide them. It’s far less expensive and less disruptive to have people stay at your company than to leave.

Advice for every leader

Whether you’re a successful entrepreneur leading a startup or an executive running a company with a predictable pipeline of customers, coaching and development of talent should be viewed as an important part of everybody’s job.

Start by building a group of people around you that you trust to communicate and demonstrate your company culture—colleagues who will provide mentoring, coaching, and development for your teams.

Then, listen to your team’s feedback—just like you listen to your customers.

At Upside, we’ve doubled down on communicating our core values and reinforcing them on a daily basis:

• Trust

  Find people who can handle extreme ownership and authority to make decisions. We hire brilliant people to make decisions for the company. We trust them to run a lean operation and I get out of the way.

• Development

  Set aside a budget for each employee to be used for professional development. Let them define how it should be used. Subscriptions, online courses, hosting events and meetups within the active startup network—all are viable options. The goal is to establish constant feedback loops outside of the office.

• Resiliency

  Invest in the people who are energized by constant change—not folks who would rather move on when faced with unexpected challenges. No matter your industry or company stage, change is inevitable.

• Transparency

  At Upside, we share the status of company-wide OKRs (objectives and key results) to keep us on track, and host an “Ask Me Anything” forum every month to get after the questions on the team’s mind. Further, we share achievements with everyone. I send a bi-weekly internal newsletter to the team to celebrate our wins and focus on our future objectives. When the team sees the forward progress we’re making, they understand what they’re working toward.

Most of your employees aren’t going to work for you forever. However, you can build and scale a company with the right approach to taking care of your people. It starts with creating a culture that attracts, challenges, and rewards hard workers. Once you establish a critical mass and everyone is consistently living your core values, you can retain more people and easily manage the occasional teammate leaving for their next opportunity. But don’t take that for granted. Keep putting energy into communicating those values day in and day out