HOUSTON TEXAS

Nottingham :)

New Haven, Connecticut!

Cork, Ireland

West Lafayette, IN

Good morning everyone!! I’m from Houston, TX

Davis, California

UW-Madison in in the virtual room

The great city of Chicago!!

Chicago, IL!!

San Francisco, CA

Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA

DC

Kigali, Rwanda here

Princeton, NJ

UC Berkeley is here

Geneva (Finger Lakes), New York

Toronto Canada

Buffalo, NY

Hi from Grand Rapids, MI

Coventry, UK

Good morning/afternoon to everyone from Stillwater, OK

Eugene, OR

Durham, North Carolina!

Exeter, UK here

North Dakota

Univ of Rochester, Rochester, NY!

Washington, DC

Massachusetts

St. Louis, Missouri (WashU)

Los Angeles

Suffern, New York

Iasi, Romania

Phoenix, Arizona at Arizona State University

London, England

Penn State University, State College, PA

Rice University, Houston

Mary Tapolsky from University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada

Harvard Business School, Boston

Welcome everyone! Apologies for those who had trouble logging in. - from Arlington, Virginia

University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Stanford & STVP with Tom!

Greensboro NC

Berkeley Ca.

Hi from Gainesville, Florida!

Houston, Texas

University of Texas at Austin

On the Ohio River

Greetings from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL!

Tucson, AZ at Arizona FORGE (UA)

St. Gallen, Switzerland

Toronto, Canada. Ryerson University

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Hi from Rochester, NY!

Hi from Penn State Happy Valley LaunchBox!

Greetings from Torch Lake Michigan!

Hey y'all from TCU in Fort Worth, TX

Hello from Boston! Katie Hemphill from Northeastern University here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-hemphill-87ab2147/

Hi from Louisville, KY!

Chappaqua,NY

Hello, here I am from the "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi, Romania!

Hello from UNC in Colorado!

Greetings from Jack M Wilson Center for Entrepreneurship www.uml.edu/wilson-center

Greetings all from Baltimore and Loyola University MD

San Antonio, TX

Hello all, Philip Bouchard, TrustedPeer Entrepreneurship in San Francisco.

Hi everyone. Greetings from the University of Suffolk, UK.

Attendees: we will keep you all muted, but please feel free to post questions & comments in the chat bar. Tom & the panelists will be checking here for your engagement.

Hello from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL!

Hi, do you need a password to join this meeting?

It was hard getting into the meeting. I was asked for a password that I didn't have.

I had an issue joining the call as the zoom link in the Eventbrite reminder asked for one.

@Metawe, the link from the Eventbrite requires password.

Apologies to those who had issues logging in.

Question: how can students learn the impacts of their ventures in a controlled environment?

Me, as well. Had to reach out to David Lange for a different link. @Metawe @Jason

Jeremy Bentham’s preserved body still sits in a glass case at the heart of UCL’s London Campus…..https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/feb/jeremy-bentham-finds-new-home-ucls-student-centre

Joe DeSimone from Carbon …

Question: what is the role of diversity, equity and inclusion in these efforts around ethics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiZXiZDwo8A&feature=youtu.be

please post a link to register for the de&i talk you mentioned

Question: what are the top three quandaries faced by student entrepreneurs have a substantial ethical dimension?

Tom - At a high level, what are the basic ethical issues that need to be addressed in entrepreneurship? And how do you teach students about addressing those issues?

We are all diverse

I think the stats show that the majority of tech sector is white male, both in post-secondary and in the workforce in the Western world

+1 Carey, +1 Jon's justice.

Im interested in the ethics around sweat equity, and who in our society is able to work without salary in the short term, or for deferred compensation.

Q: Degrowth is becoming popular in critical theory (as an extension to green growth). How does entrepreneurship fit in here, considering growth is so essential to starting up.

I worry that

Without definitions and an agenda a conversation evolves endlessly

The reliance on the stock market and its demands for growth, the investors’ rate of return as the central factor make it difficult to look at other models around sustainability or double or triple bottom lines

Who are the role models you are using in your classes as examples of ethical entrepreneurs? Seems like there are just cautionary tales right now.

Thank you Laura, for having us take responsibility. We can and must do better.

There was a series of talks earlier this week as part of the launch of Stanford Rebuild including a great one by Professor Sarah Soule from Stanford GSB on the Inequities of COVID-19 and how to bring a DEI lens to all innovation. Recordings are available at rebuildsprint.stanford.edu/getinspired.

The selection of examples used in entrepreneurship education have ethical implications. How should we handle the unethical behavior of highly successful and famous entrepreneurs? Should we screen examples based on ethical standards? How can we highlight the unethical behavior of common examples of entrepreneurial success?

That's right, we have a responsibility as educators to be fierce advocates and champions of diversity in all forms.

What next steps are university-based entrepreneurship educators/practitioners taking in navigating inherent conflicts with institutional interests (e.g. IP rights, economics around tech transfer, etc.)?

The top 10 richest Silicon Valley moguls, all of whom are white men, are worth a combined $248.2 billion yet the number of Black women employed by 10 of the valley's largest tech companies is zero, according to a study out of San Jose State University. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sjsu-study-shows-silicon-valleys-stunning-income-wealth-divide/2314397/

Entrepreneurship Centres, particularly when provided with external funding, are given targets to create start-ups. How do we ensure (audit/police?) students with business ideas not deemed viable or sustainable, are not encouraged to pursue such goals whilst such risks and odds are against them?

We still see these startups who use biased facial recognition systems to “predict criminality” and investors are willing to fund these dangerous platforms

Q: How do you manage the tension between our educational mission and the commercial mission/goals of the (student)entrepreneurs we serve?

The exciting moral dimension of entrepreneurship: the founder(s) have the rare privilege of shaping the very PURPOSE of their community/company

“The fact is that there has never been any single, solid, determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans to genuine equality for Negroes.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html?referringSource=articleShare

Thanks Singari for the link

Can we take a quick survey to see if universities require their students to take an ethics course to graduate?

Just noticed @Stephen Douglas posed this more eloquently :)

I like Alex Settles question on screening examples. So, what is the baseline definition of "ethical"? For example, one person may agree Mark Zuckerberg was not ethical in 2016, but others would disagree.

What is our responsibility as Center or Program Directors to reach out to impact justice?

What are we doing in this regard? What activities?

There are many ethical problems with Zuckerberg from founding of Facebook to the present.

We need to raise our standard for the types of problems we are solving

Is it wrong to pursue a venture solely for profit?

Asking for Rationale at every stage and coaching through the 5 whys changes the way student entrepreneurs understand when ethical questions begin to surface. And it’s MUCH earlier than they would ever believe possible. UGs can often have very little experience in thinking outside of their own set of circumstances.

Here's a great example - led by Matt Smilor at TCU - of infusing values and entrepreneurship together http://www.neeley.tcu.edu/vandv/

At Georgetown all of our business students take a required course on Ethical Values in Business - and in that class there is a required entrepreneurship component. Our Ethics faculty use student startup ideas as "highly relevant" case studies to explore ethical issues.

We should also include the environment in this conversation. Diversity in the environment is key to this planet's survival.

Entrepreneurship is all about solving problems for customers(people) and that is a very noble goal. Getting rich is a side effect of solving those customer problems and that is why the most successful entrepreneurs focus on that as the goal.

Tom you are bringing up a huge point - we have so many adjuncts/mentors/advisors helping our programs - and we have to be very careful to vet them for ethical behavior and proper motivation - they can't be engaging just to find a commercial opportunity.

@Dan unless it is a social enterprise, then getting rich is not part of the motivation (or shouldn't be) :)

Entrepreneurship is NOT about solving problems for customers, it is about making them happy! Making them happy enough to give money in return. That’s where the ethics are hidden. Manipulation grows sales for most companies. There’s even a field, persuasion tech!

At UC Berkeley, we are launching a “Responsible Innovation in the Era of AI” next spring. If anyone would like to collaborate on that topic, please DM me.

The issue is how the profit is created.

Here is an interesting series of discussions around the ethical impacts of new technologies. "Should This Exist" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/should-this-exist/id1450215523

Profit is a question of morality. Conduct is the force of ethics. We need to separate these concepts.

Agreed Ted!

Anyone who would like to save a copy of the chat log can do so by clicking the "File" button here in the chat box.

If you are interested in how ethics is changing in entrepreneurship education scholarship, check out the special issue from Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/eexa/3/3

What amount of profit is acceptable when wages are inequitable and non-execs (especially hourly workers) are underpaid?

+1 Laura

totally agree with Laura's point. The purpose of the business and capitalism is that goal.

Agreed. Profit is usually defined in a narrow scope

This year we’re going to spend more time on the system. It’s one thing to talk about the ethics of the individual entrepreneur, and quite another to to tackle a system that is inaccessible to most of the population.

Reminder: July 1 is the deadline for proposals for GCEC 2020 https://www.gcecvegas.com/

How not to exploit capitalism in order to gain profits - this is the question that I think we need answered.

Agreed @Mike! We created the system that allows inequity, we can create one that forbids it. Keep the good about capitalism and get rid of the bad.

I would love to see the creativity and innovation of the minds of young entrepreneurs turned to the task of updating capitalism as a system that serves the few instead of the many

Really great ideas, thanks, everyone!

I have had success challenging students to look at existing ventures or their own ideas and visualizing the “best case” and “worst case” scenarios and then design how they would respond in those situations… this allows us to have those conversations together, to consider all perspectives, and to prepare for what that responsibility looks like. For instance, what if they have a product liability issue or what if they bring on an investor who is found to guilty of tax fraud or what if there is a lawsuit brought by an employee or a partner? Having them visualize the way they might handle this brings in thoe design-thinking skills as well as equipping them to make these decisions in the future when it really counts.

Thanks all!

We run an incubation programme for recent graduates. I'd be interested in engaging with anyone on VALUES for youn entrepreneurs - honesty, integrity, humility?

Thanks all

The are entrepreneurs in every type of economic system! There are thousands in N Korea. The USSR saw lots of entrepreneurial successes

Thanks everyone

Thanks everyone

Thanks everyone!!

Great discussion! Thanks.

great discussion. Thank you

Great discussion. Thanks!

Thanks all...good thought-starting discussions.

Thanks Everyone! Great discussion!