A Vision

The vision: A consortium of University’s collaborate to implement a program where student interns practice business management, entrepreneurship, and product development with products and services that have the purpose of improving employee workplace wellbeing and organizational culture.

Situation: Organizations worldwide are in the midst of the most important organizational movement of our lifetime – the culture movement. There has recently been an explosion of literature and media that supports this statement. The time is at hand when businesses must know and understand their culture and possibly change, or risk survival.

Mission: The Institutes University Support mission is to provide a complete turnkey model for student interns on several University campuses to support local businesses to improve their workplace wellbeing and organizational cultures. The model includes training materials, computer software, facilitation processes, and project management. It is an all-around win-win mission. Students win with broad based real life business experiences that help businesses to maximize the value of their most important assets, i.e., their employees and their cultures. Companies win with happier stakeholders including employees, customers, and investors. Universities win by speedy implementation of a readymade initiative that supports two of their most important purposes, i.e., community outreach and entrepreneurship.

Student interns: Students majoring in any area of business, psychology, public affairs and community service, graphic arts and design, and information systems are the typical majors involved in the Institutes operations on a campus. A rigorous process is used to select students who wish to be considered for internships. The processes used are similar to those used by Zappos, Patagonia, SAS and other culturally aware companies when they consider applicants for employment.

An engagement scenario: In the startup period a community awareness program is put into place. This is both on and off campus. That is followed by short public seminars that explain the program, operations, competencies, and services. After a company (s) expresses possible interest in collaborating, a team of students and the faculty advisor visits the company and follows up with a proposal. The proposal includes goals, milestones, software training, employee involvement, and deliverables. Whether or not services are pro bono is determined by each University.

University participation: University partners provide space and office infrastructure. They provide a faculty advisor on a full or part time basis for operational management, student training, mentoring, and student performance management. The group of students and faculty advisor operate as a standalone services company. This group will also solicit and engage volunteer human resources from the general academic and business community.

Origin of the model: Dr. Jerry Wagner the founder of the Institute is widely recognized for his career of combining entrepreneurship with academic innovation. This includes being Founder and Director of the Employee Wellbeing Institute at Bellevue University. He started the BSc. degree in IT Innovation at the Peter Kiewit Institute, the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His first company called Execucom Systems in Austin, Texas had the first known University Support program where its software was provided to academic institutions. More than 1000 campuses worldwide participated. His product called the Planners Lab© was made available to academic institutions in 2010 and to date there have been more than 3000 student downloads of the software.

Maybe a new term: In a 2011 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the authors suggested a new term “Cultural Entrepreneurship” as being different than the popular term “Social Entrepreneurship”. They suggested that cultural entrepreneurship focuses on motivating new behaviors that change hearts and minds.  That definition is precisely what the business culture movement is about. The recent business book entitled “Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose” is filled with examples of high profile successful companies that are aligned with motivating new behaviors that change hearts and minds of employees, customers, partners, investors and society.

Consistent with the philosophy of the overall Institute we want many co-conspirators to help design, develop, grow and sustain this University Support program.

Director: Dr. Jerry Wagner jerry.wagner.ioc@gmail.com newstreamtv.com/jerrywagner
inspiredorganizationalcultures.org