Wearing a Noggin Boss hat with the GCU logo around Thailand helped Robert Vera educate people about the university and that, no, it's not located at the Grand Canyon.
The oversized hats seen at NFL games (and soon at the Olympics) and produced at GCU's Canyon Ventures fascinated onlookers at the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers' New Frontiers Bangkok Summit in June.
“Many knew of us,” Vera said of the 184 attendees who were either university professionals or members of the global consortium. “I don’t think they knew how big we were, nor did they know the robustness of our ecosystem. I was able to showcase how connected our curricular is to our entrepreneurship extracurricular programs.”
The Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers gathers business accelerators and incubators from universities all over the world, which seemed a perfect fit for GCU, who helps launch startups through its own business incubator, Canyon Ventures.
Vera, founding director of Canyon Ventures, wanted to attend to expand GCU's global footprint. He also wanted to meet other university professionals and gather best practices to help the businesses and students at the university.
“I’m so proud to be an ambassador of our GCU brand,” he said.
Vera joined the global consortium a year ago, and he was chosen as a presenter to discuss “Fostering A Thriving University Entrepreneur Ecosystem.”
The theme of the summit involved sustainability and how entrepreneurs can develop businesses that help the economy, society and the environment. It started with a team-focused game in which participants were challenged to build companies that balance economic growth, benefit society and do not harm the environment.
This was the international organization's first event in Asia, and Vera brought a GCU student business-produced RingMe Smart Ring, a piece of jewelry that contains a chip which stores business card information, as well as a Noggin Boss hat.
He also told participants about 1920, a multiuse apparel company; CarChap, a holster for lip balm; Big Time Jerseys; Hoolest; Branch49, a full-stack sales and marketing consulting company; and other businesses that operate out of Canyon Ventures. He wanted to show how they provide a competitive advantage to students, as well as drive economic growth around the Valley.
Vera said his presentation was well-received.
“There were a lot of questions on how we do it (at GCU). It was seen as very innovative, as how we marry our extracurricular with our curricular.”
As an example, Vera explained how the Canyon Angels investors program, the Student Marketplace, IDEA Club, Founder’s Forum and Canyon Challenge are “woven into the curriculum and give experiential learning” to students that provides them with great opportunities and gives them “real currency” to their GCU education.
He emphasized that entrepreneurship is offered to every student, regardless of their major.
“It’s very collegial,” Vera said. “We’re all looking for new ideas to improve what we’re doing.”
Two organizations were so struck with the model that they offered invitations to GCU students to participate in two pitch events offering $2 million in prize money for their innovations.
“They view, as we do, that entrepreneurs change the world,” said Vera, who was impressed by the hospitality provided by the Sasin School of Management, which hosted the event. “And it was like being on one big team, just sharing and helping to improve ideas. It was a great experience to know everybody.”
Two ideas Vera plans to bring from Thailand to Canyon Ventures is creating a QR code for tour visitors and a tombstone of the companies that have graduated from Canyon Ventures.
Vera’s mission to meet entrepreneurs extended after the summit. He traveled to Chiang Mai, near the Laos border, to visit a university as well as an elephant sanctuary.
He noticed that the owner of one elephant sanctuary hired a team of workers that included cooks, tour guides, cleaners and drivers that provide transportation from Chiang Mai hotels. “It’s sustainable entrepreneurship,” Vera said.
Tourists spend the entire day with the elephants, from feeding them to swimming with them in the river on part of a 1,000-acre facility.
This area is the Golden Triangle and was once the leading drug exporter. It has been since transformed into a tourist destination with coffee farms and full of sustainable entrepreneurship.
A trip to Krabi, toward the southern coast, was eventful, as Vera met boat tour owners, more entrepreneurs and ubiquitous tuk-tuk taxi drivers.
“I always say entrepreneurs follow about 60% of the rules 20% of the time, whatever is possible," Vera said. “Believe it or not, tuk-tuk drivers follow much less. Road signs and lanes are merely suggestions.”
With the population of college students in the United States on the decline for the first time since World War II, Vera believes there is an opportunity for students from Asia and Latin America to come to the United States, and to GCU.
There also is flexibility for students to start their programs here and finish online.
“I see that as a great opportunity for us to promote the brand,” Vera said. “Many people in Bangkok now know about GCU. There were dozens of people who just wanted to take pictures of me with the Noggin Boss hat.”
That could build momentum in foreign markets, where students could be enticed to study in the United States because it represents the largest market for entrepreneur products and services.
“It’s really exciting for me to see we could expand our GCU brand and our entrepreneurship ecosystem to include entrepreneurs from across the globe,” Vera said.
Furthermore, building a partnership with Christian schools or Christian communities that want to continue that education in a way that welcomes their Christian values would be ideal, Vera added.
He cited one professor at a Texas university who brings a group of eight to 10 students with him overseas every summer to help solve an entrepreneur’s problem in 30 days.
“If we were able to do that with our Christian students, what a great opportunity to showcase our faith in a way that benefits so many people,” Vera said.
GCU is ahead of the pack, based on Vera’s observations of the summit.
“Just to see where GCU stands in terms of entrepreneurship, I would say that while every university is different in its approach, I believe we are delivering one of the top university entrepreneurship programs,” Vera said. “What I was encouraged to see is that we’re all working to build that next generation of great entrepreneurs.”
GCU News Senior Writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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