“The economies of the future will be based on Brazil, Russia, Israel and China,” explained David Freschman, entrepreneur-in-residence at The Fox School and president of the Delaware Innovation Fund at The Fox School's sixth annual International Venture Fair on June 3, 2004.
Recognizing the trend toward a global economy, the Venture Fair showcased Fox International MBA (IMBA) student teams’ business plans, created for global entrepreneurial companies looking to enter the U.S. marketplace.
Students generated these plans as part of the IMBA’s Global Entrepreneurship in Technology (GET) Consulting Practicum, taught by assistant professor T.L. Hill. Global partners--Welingkar Institute of Management in India, Institute de Gestion Sociale in France and the Ben Gurion University in Israel—-helped spur relationships with participating companies.
According to Hill, “From a company’s point of view, they gain four representatives in the U.S. with faculty supervisors.”
At the fair, student teams presented to an audience that included qualified investors—angel investors and venture capitalists—and generated a great deal of interest, as evidenced by the many offline meetings following the presentations.
In his remarks, Fox School Dean Moshe Porat summed up the International Venture Fair, saying, “Two of the three tenets that drive the Fox School—international business and entrepreneurship—are the essence of this fair. Even the third tenet, information technology, is represented by one of today’s companies, Two-Ten Health,” a company that creates enterprise and clinical information systems for dental hospitals, clinics and chains.
Other companies attending this year’s fair included BeCrypt, Ltd. (United Kingdom); Engineuity, Ltd. (Israel); IsoMedics (USA); Jettable, Ltd. (Israel); Orthogon, Ltd. (Israel); and Uni Deritend, Ltd. (India).
Peter Jaco, CEO of BeCrypt, Ltd., which provides enterprise-level data security products, said that The Fox students had done “a fantastic job” with their plan for his company. He added that he will incorporate the students’ work—research, contacts and ideas--into his company’s ultimate plan for entry into the United States.
The benefit was also clear for IMBA student Adam Shanes. “I got experience in a real-life situation that tied business classes in marketing, HR, strategic management, and more, together,” said Shanes.
Keynote speaker Bill Rosoff, president of Advanta Corporation, aimed his comments at helping students and those early in their careers. He cautioned that his advice might sound like “apple pie,” but added that he considered it proven to work. His first tip was to avoid “jargon and complicated language that masks clear thinking,” a problem he sees as endemic in the venture capital world, as well as in other realms.
Second, he stressed the importance of maintaining an “interior ethical compass.” “You can live life calculating whether you’ll get away with something or live life ethically,” which, he went on to say, can be done with success—as his own example shows.
This year, Entrepreneur magazine named Fox's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute as one of the top 40 entrepreneurship programs in the nation, from a pool that including nearly 1,000 programs. Also this year, U.S. News and World Report named Fox’s graduate international business programs 17th in the nation.
