If an increasingly common career path of Swarthmore College students is any indication, the best preparation for success as an entrepreneur might be literature, philosophy, hard science, and the like - the liberal arts, in other words - rather than business classes.
"You definitely do not need a degree in business to make it as an entrepreneur," says Patricia Trinder of Swarthmore's Career Services Office, which helps hundreds of students and alumni find their way in the career world.
Swarthmoreans' growing interest in entrepreneurship and business will be on display on Sunday, April 6, when the College hosts the fourth annual Jonathan R. Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship. An estimated 150 alumni and students are expected at the event, to begin at 11 a.m. in the Lang Performing Arts Center on the Swarthmore campus.
Entrepreneurship peaked in the U.S. during the late-'90s dot-com craze. But even now, after the bubble has burst, Trinder believes interest remains high among Swarthmore students and young alumni, as evidenced by the strong turnout earlier this semester at a campus workshop on preparing business plans. As a liberal arts school, Swarthmore offers no professional or vocational training but instead focuses on a kind of education said to "teach people how to think." That serves Swarthmoreans in good stead as entrepreneurs, Trinder says.
"I think the liberal arts background is great for entrepreneurs," she says. "Our students can write. They know how to communicate. They know how to find and analyze information. They can see the potential commercial applications in new science and new technologies. They're great at figuring out what society needs and how to go about fulfilling it - in the business world as well as the non-profit sector."
The conference will begin with a keynote address by Mark Reinganum, an executive and portfolio strategist at Oppenheimer Funds, Inc., and a professor at Southern Methodist University. Reinganum is best known as the founder of the theory known as "stock market anomalies." His address is titled "Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?"
The keynote will be followed by two concurrent panels - "On the Technological Horizon: Intertwining Intellectual Property, Finance, and Technology" and "Biotechnology: Bridging Science and Business." The former is to include William Squadron, a 1977 Swarthmore graduate who invented the Emmy Award-winning "1st & Ten" - the yellow first-down line superimposed over the field on football telecasts. The conference will conclude with a closing roundtable, "Ethical Conduct Versus Profit Maximization: A Dilemma for Corporate Governance?"
Conference organizers note that the subject of the closing event is particularly relevant in light of last year's corporate scandals. "Because the Swarthmore education places so much emphasis on social responsibility, this college is an ideal venue for a discussion of the ethical dimension of business," said Alumni Relations Director Lisa Lee '81, whose office is co-sponsoring the conference with the Career Services Office.
For a detailed schedule and information on the panelists, visit the conference web site at www.swarthmore.edu/lax.
Begun in 2000, the Lax Conference is named in honor of Jonathan R. Lax, a 1971 Swarthmore graduate who was a business executive, a noted social activist, and founder of the Philadelphia-based market research and consulting company the Marketing Audit.
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