Learn by Doing

After several years of preparation, Florida Gulf Coast University initiated entrepreneurial instruction in fall 2014. By fall 2016, it opened an incubator, the Runway Emerging Technology Institute. The university followed in fall 2017 by taking another big step: offering a major in entrepreneurship studies.

In doing so, FGCU did something only two other U.S. universities — Florida State and Drexel University in Philadelphia — have done. It created the program as its own entity, separate from the business college, and offered its curriculum to students in any FGCU college.

In addition to its independence, the program, under the name the Institute for Entrepreneurship, took a counterintuitive approach from the start. That includes incorporating nonbusiness faculty in the classes, and a learn-by-doing approach that emphasizes experience over classroom instruction.