Are the special sparks of creativity and do-it-yourself vigor that are the hallmarks of entrepreneurship something that can be learned in a classroom? Increasingly, scientists are teaching scientists the art and business of new commercial ventures. At Northwestern, for example, students with science and engineering backgrounds compose one-third of the classes taught by physicist and business professor Stuart Meyer in the Kellogg School of Management. And at Cornell, former physicist and General Electric Co. manager David Ben Daniel holds the Berens Chair of Entrepreneurship in the Johnson Graduate School of Management. BenDaniel’s background, he feels, gives him a “special rapport” with the large majority of students whose projects have a technical or software component.
Cambridge BioScience has something that might make other startups drool: exclusive rights to Harvard’s patent for gpl 20, a protein from the envelope of the AIDS virus. But under the agreement it struck with Harvard, it ...
