GSSE Launch

One goal for an entrepreneur is "launch." That point where your team has worked and worked and you finally are ready to go. Sell your new product. Introduce your new idea. Until the point of launch, you have been working largely within your network... but launch means customers, press, public feedback. Exciting times, indeed, and a bit scary, too. Because no matter how much preparation you do... you don't really know what is going to happen.

The CSU Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise Program (GSSE) has launched. Our first cohort of 20+ students arrived on campus in mid-August for orientation. They have now finished the first few weeks of class, and it is going great. We knew we had a great collection of talented individuals, and are pleased to see how quickly they have formed a “tribe”.* This past weekend they had an intensive seminar on "Personal Leadership for Changemakers" with Sue Schell, and it was great to see their energy and enthusisam.

In an earlier post, I wrote of thinking of a venture as having stages. “Launch” is a stage. Now its on to other stages of the GSSE venture: courses, projects, field work, theses, graduation and worthy ventures for these students. They have already begun to build two of the most important elements of an education; the connections between class members and their identity as a group.

* I am not using this term in a precise anthropological way. Figurative tribe, not literal.