Entrepreneurship

As part of the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship speaker series, Andrew Kreinik, senior growth advisor for the Small Business Development Centers, will speak on "Think Global - SBDC Export Assistance Program" Friday, April 20 from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at 9250 Bendix Road North, in Columbia. The focus is on the benefits of exporting for small businesses, support services available and which export activities are making it easier to export. Learn about the resources, financing and cost-free consulting available.

Paul Capriolo and the crew at Social Growth Technologies are looking forward to graduation, having spent years getting ready for the world outside this one-story beige building in Columbia. The Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship is not a school, but it does cultivate business and launch its charges toward bigger things. In fall 2009, Capriolo, partner Patrick Jenkins and an intern started in one office at the building; the company now has 22 employees, occupying about a dozen offices and some 5,000 square feet - a third of the space available for lease at MCE. By this summer, they expect to move to offices in Columbia three times that size.

Paul Capriolo and the crew at Social Growth Technologies are looking forward to graduation, having spent years getting ready for the world outside this one-story beige building in Columbia. The Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship is not a school, but it does cultivate business and launch its charges toward bigger things. In fall 2009, Capriolo, partner Patrick Jenkins and an intern started in one office at the building; the company now has 22 employees, occupying about a dozen offices and some 5,000 square feet - a third of the space available for lease at MCE. By this summer, they expect to move to offices in Columbia three times that size.

Ted Capshaw, of White Marsh, has been appointed executive director of The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Baltimore Affiliate. Mr. Capshaw was most recently chief operating officer at the Baltimore Urban Debate League. In that role, he oversaw operations, budgeting and human resources. Prior to the Baltimore Urban Debate League, Mr. Capshaw served as virtual chief learning officer/fitness director at the Maryland Athletic Club; chief learning officer at Benelogic; senior consultant/facilitator with EntreQuest; counselor for Treatment Resources for Youth; and director, mentoring services, for Right Step Inc. He holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota and has completed coursework toward a master's in human development at St. Mary's University in Rochester, Minn.

Ted Capshaw, of White Marsh, has been appointed executive director of The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Baltimore Affiliate. Mr. Capshaw was most recently chief operating officer at the Baltimore Urban Debate League. In that role, he oversaw operations, budgeting and human resources. Prior to the Baltimore Urban Debate League, Mr. Capshaw served as virtual chief learning officer/fitness director at the Maryland Athletic Club; chief learning officer at Benelogic; senior consultant/facilitator with EntreQuest; counselor for Treatment Resources for Youth; and director, mentoring services, for Right Step Inc. He holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota and has completed coursework toward a master's in human development at St. Mary's University in Rochester, Minn.

For $3 a person, you can use the bathroom of Carol Hines' home on Winner St, across from Pimlico race course.  Hines decided to give entrepreneurship a try for the first time this year, one of many enterprises that pop up on Preakness day in the Park Heights and Pimlico neighborhoods.  Besides offering her restroom for Preakness attendees, Hines cooked up some of her best dishes, including jerk chicken, curry chicken and barbecue ribs. ...

Hop on the bus, Gus -- the startup bus.  Have you seen this thing driving around Maryland this month -- it's a big bus draped in the colors of the Maryland flag. It's hard to miss. The Startup Bus is part of a national and state initiative to promote startup company formation and entrepreneurship. The bus has its own video recording studio built into it, where entrepreneurs are recording their business pitches. People can vote for the best business pitches online and the top 8 vote-getters will get to pitch their businesses -- in person -- at the Maryland Entrepreneur Expo in November.

Through the dusty, broken windows of a failed radio shop in Hampden, Carolyn Earls envisions a bustling crafts-supply store. People buy yarn, pine cones, glue guns. They drop money in a cash register. Her cash register. In a few years she could have a chain of bustling craft shops in neighborhoods like this. . . .It is a glorious dream of economic independence for the unemployed mother of two.Glorious. And risky.More than half of all new businesses fail within four years. But Ms. Earls, who graduated Friday from a government-funded training and loan program designed to turn unemployed workers and welfare recipients into entrepreneurs, is determined to open her shop.

Zoltan J. Acs, a professor at the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business, shares this year's International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research for his work on the role of small businesses in the economy. Acs, an entrepreneurship professor, recently received the award along with David B. Audretsch, chair of economic development at Indiana University, Bloomington. It is the sixth year that the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research has presented the award, which includes a statuette named "The Hand of God," created by Carl Milles, and a $50,000 prize.

Because Maryland's 140,000 small businesses make up 98 percent of Maryland's economy, educational programs for entrepreneurs are booming. Most colleges and universities offer several for-credit and non-credit courses in entrepreneurship. The following is an overview of those offerings. Other colleges, while they may not have programs specifically aimed at entrepreneurs, also offer courses useful to people who intend to start their own businesses.University of Maryland College Park: The Michael Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship offers a six-course entrepreneurship concentration for MBA candidates.

Hop on the bus, Gus -- the startup bus.  Have you seen this thing driving around Maryland this month -- it's a big bus draped in the colors of the Maryland flag. It's hard to miss. The Startup Bus is part of a national and state initiative to promote startup company formation and entrepreneurship. The bus has its own video recording studio built into it, where entrepreneurs are recording their business pitches. People can vote for the best business pitches online and the top 8 vote-getters will get to pitch their businesses -- in person -- at the Maryland Entrepreneur Expo in November.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. ... Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. " - President Barack Obama Remember when Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren charged that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own - nobody"? That gratuitous shot at American individualism generated a storm of criticism that continues to this day. But a recent series of speeches by President Obama has trumped Ms. Warren.

For $3 a person, you can use the bathroom of Carol Hines' home on Winner St, across from Pimlico race course.  Hines decided to give entrepreneurship a try for the first time this year, one of many enterprises that pop up on Preakness day in the Park Heights and Pimlico neighborhoods.  Besides offering her restroom for Preakness attendees, Hines cooked up some of her best dishes, including jerk chicken, curry chicken and barbecue ribs. ...

As part of the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship speaker series, Andrew Kreinik, senior growth advisor for the Small Business Development Centers, will speak on "Think Global - SBDC Export Assistance Program" Friday, April 20 from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at 9250 Bendix Road North, in Columbia. The focus is on the benefits of exporting for small businesses, support services available and which export activities are making it easier to export. Learn about the resources, financing and cost-free consulting available.

Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has received an academic leadership award from the Carnegie Corp. of New York that carries with it a $500,000 grant. The Carnegie award is one of the largest cash prizes given in recognition of higher education leadership. Hrabowski won the 2011 prize along with Eduardo J. Padron, president of Miami Dade College. "Presidents Hrabowski and Padron have been powerful voices advocating for a robust undergraduate education that strives for excellence and creates an environment for students — especially low-income, minority and immigrant students — in which success is the norm," said Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corp., in a statement.

Chances are that if you drank a cup of coffee recently at the Bean Hollow Cafe in Ellicott City you sipped that steaming brew from a mug made by Greenbridge Pottery in Dayton. It feels good to support a local business or two. What feels even better is knowing that every time a mug or a plate or a yarn bowl is purchased directly from Greenbridge Pottery, a portion of the sale helps others in our community and around the world. It's called social enterprise. “We were making pottery to make ourselves and our customers happy by trying to make something useful and beautiful.

Michael Simmons started his first business, a Web development company, as an underclassman in high school. By the time he was a senior, he was netting $50 an hour, better than what most high school students earn mowing lawns or baby-sitting. Today, he and his wife, Sheena Lindahl, both in their 20s, run the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corp. and visit college campuses across the country to help motivate and guide budding entrepreneurs. And there is a growing audience of young men and women eager to receive that message.

Like most entrepreneurs, Suzy Frentz has had her ups and downs. She's seen her business grow to gain national attention, struggle with local government bureaucracy and face closing after 11 years. But this grizzled veteran isn't average in one important way - she's just 19 years old. Frentz and her sister Diana operate Snowball City, a stand built with their father's help in their family garage in southern Howard County. A mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland, College Park, Suzy Frentz has invested sweat equity in the stand since she was 8. Today, she and her sister are bit players in a national trend.

The Baltimore City school board approved Tuesday night a recommendation to close one high school that failed to improve its graduation and test scores, and reorganize four other schools whose students have been underperforming on state assessments. Under the new plan, announced by schools CEO Andres Alonso in November, the Institute of Business and Entrepreneurship High School will close in 2012, allowing only seniors to stay through the end of next school year in order to graduate.

Paul Weller is seated beside his work, colorful fused-glass art pieces that display his feel for texture and design. They're the kinds of pieces that would rival any church's stained glass and are a testament to the talents of a man born with physical and mental challenges. Weller hopes that his artwork can help others with similar challenges. Jean Weller has enrolled her son in an entrepreneurship program at Howard Community College to assist him in forming a nonprofit that offers financial assistance to help the disabled enroll in creative arts programs.