Florida State University
IN-26: Innovation C

The Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship, the nation’s first stand-alone entrepreneurship school at a public university, opens its doors in the heart of the capital city’s business district. The revolutionary and highly experiential Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship is dedicated to teaching those who wish to embark on an entrepreneurial journey. The school inspires students by providing a rich curriculum for both entrepreneurship majors and minors in an environment that promotes entrepreneurial thinking, hands-on learning and real-life experience through business mentoring, networking and internships. The Jim Moran School maintains Entrepreneurs in Residence, who are successful professionals, provide coaching and expertise to accelerate the launch and success of student startups. The Jim Moran School focuses on how the emerging field of social entrepreneurship is promoting innovative, impactful, and sustainable approaches to addressing social and environmental problems. The specialization looks at how social entrepreneurship is defined and expressed in three essential contexts: innovation and impact across the sectors, social enterprise, and social transformation. Students learn to leverage the resources of investors, consumers, stakeholders, and communities to address pressing social and environmental problems and innovate solutions for systemic change, whether in newly-created social enterprises; existing nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and philanthropic foundations; or institutions devoted to social impact start-up and investing.The Jim Moran School makes the connection between environmentally responsible sourcing, social good, and the economy. In addition, the school has established Jim Moran micro-grants. Students from any college at FSU can apply for the $5,000 micro-grant to be used for a specific need for growth or improvement of an existing business or to validate the market of a new business concept. Entrepreneurial students submit an application that includes the student business’s value proposition, what problem they are trying to solve, customer segments, customer relationships and channels, key partners, activities and resources, anticipated costs and revenues along with the student’s plan to use the grant funding to validate their assumptions about these areas. Those student businesses that have already been validated and launched will include a plan outlining how the grant funds will be used for a specific need that will enable the business to grow. Students develop a video “pitch” describing the problem they are trying to solve, how their solution will solve that problem, and outline their specific skills to launch this successful business venture.