Events
Duke Professor Encourages Creative Entrepreneurship
RALEIGH, N.C. (February 25, 2013) - Self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” Carl Nordgren described generosity, humility, playfulness, and enthusiasm as critical to successful entrepreneurship as he spoke on Wake Tech’s Northern Wake Campus. Nordgren, an author and associate professor at Duke University, told budding entrepreneurs about the relationship-building power of storytelling and creativity during the recent Speaker Series event sponsored by the Wake Tech-Wells Fargo Center for Entrepreneurship.
“It’s wonderful to have a calling,” says Nordgren. “Mine is to help entrepreneurs start and grow companies more effectively, and to help everyone understand how vitally important it is be intentional as we expand our creative capacities and develop our entrepreneurial instincts.”
Nordgren has had a founding role in ten companies, including two pioneer cellular telephone companies and two highly-innovative marketing agencies. He has helped start a sports magazine publisher, a software development company, and a semiconductor company and was a partner in a seed stage venture fund in which he ran a business incubator.
He has taught courses in Creative Entrepreneurship at Duke for 11 years. Nordgren’s new mission is the “Creative Populist Revolution” (subject of his recently self-published book), which focuses on high school students but encourages everyone to be, what he calls, creatively entrepreneurial.
The Wake Tech-Wells Fargo Center for Entrepreneurship, a resource center for prospective small business owners, is made possible by a grant from Wells Fargo. The Entrepreneur Speaker Series is a quarterly program in which successful entrepreneurs share stories about their business ventures. The Center also offers seminars, networking events, small business resources, and a virtual "colony" of entrepreneurs for sharing ideas online, as well as scholarships for continuing education courses and curriculum programs for college credit. More information can be found at http://entrepreneurship.waketech.edu.
