THE VISION

Dr. Michael D. Ames, Professor Emeritus of Management and the founder of the Entrepreneurship Program at California State Fullerton, envisioned the creation of one HUNDRED businesses per year each generating annual revenues of a MILLION dollars and each reaching its TEN-year anniversay adding billions of dollars to our local economy.

THE INITIATIVE

The concept of NESBA started as part of an MBA in Entrepreneurship research project, by Zack Dafaallah, a proven entrepreneur, and under the guidance of Dr. Ames and in collaboration with notables in the field, to create an initiative to carry the entrepreneurship beyond the goals of a college degree and into realizing Dr. Ames' vision of helping the local economy and beyond.

BACKGROUND

The study of entrepreneurship, with its cross-disciplinary nature, as foundation for commercialization of innovation and new venture creation was developed by, evolved within and has been limited to institutions of higher educational, i.e. schools of management. As such, it is viewed and offered, in degree-oriented programs, with an embedded load of case study and analyses that attempts to "mimic" business startups to "simulate" real life situations. However, the lack of the "real-life" experiential dimension, in the college setting, poses a major obstacle to acheiving the goal of developing the entrepreneurial capacity of college students.

This type of "entrepreneurship education" provides students of entrepreneurship with theoretical foundation for considering self employment as a career option after graduation. However, the development of the entrepreneurial skills set, which cannot be confused with business skills, is left for beyond college, and the focus shifts to teaching "about entrepreneurship".

However, because the vast majority of entrepreneurship graduates opt for employment rather than self-employment, most rarely develop their entrepreneurial skills and experiences, despite being trained and knowledgeable in the theoretical and functional aspects of "business". Even the very few entrepreneurship graduates who advance to start their own businesses, do so six to ten year after graduation, research reveals.

On the flip side, would be entrepreneurs, with plenty of "technical" skills and experience start businesses on a daily bases without the formal business training needed to develop the "business skills" set necessary to enhance the startup chances of success. Soon these novice entrepreneurs and their new ventures find themselves facing a myriad of easily avoidable mistakes and challenges that end up causing the failure of most startup ventures as statistics indicate.

The main reason for the notoriously high, but often exagerated, failure rate of small business start-ups, is the lack of "entrepreneurial skills" that are associated with, and are the result of, the knowledge of the elements that make up and define "Entrepreneurship" and "Small business startup", and what constitutes a successful blending of these elements to allow for increased chances of success for the new ventures.

Research has also revealed that small business start-ups, whose owners have had some sort of entrepreneurial/business training, have better odds of survival even if they are not as well capitalized as their counterparts whose owners did not have any type of entrepreneurial/business training

THE PROGRAMS

Based on The Entrepreneurial Development System, EDS, developed by Drs. Gregg A. Lichtenstein and Thomas S. Lyons, “LabFrog Ventures™, NESBA's flagship program, is a comprenehensive and an integrated entrepreneurial and business training program developed and structured to meet the entrepreneurial develpment needs of start-up owners who seek to develop their entrepreneurial capacities and business skills to enhance thier chances of their businesses. ”Read more"

"BEST™ (Begining Entrepreneur Support and Training) is a business training and support program developed to meet the entrepreneurial develpment needs of entrepreneurs who have already launched their businesses and seek to develop their business skills to better maximize the potential of their small business. "