Guest Lecture on Leadership in Entrepreneurial Ventures, by Ms. Laura Parkin, Executive Director of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN)
August 3, 2007

Ms. Laura Parkin, Executive Director of the Wadhwani Foundation, addressed the students on Leadership in Entrepreneurial Ventures. Laura is the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), which is a leading catalyst for entrepreneurship education in India. Since its inception in 2002, NEN has included over 200 top tier institutes across 26 cities in its team. It is helping develop a pool of over 300 entrepreneurship faculty members and currently reaches over 200,000 students. Ms. Laura started the address with an emphasis on leadership skills for entrepreneurs. She highlighted the fact that there is a difference in the attitude and skills required to be a manager and those required to be an entrepreneur. The manager has clear goals in front of him/her and has to develop strategies to achieve them. An entrepreneur on the other hand does not have a well defined goal or target. The entire process is just a learning curve to fulfil his/her dreams. On a concluding note she briefed the audience about NEN and explained how i t can h e l p budding entrepreneurs realize their dreams by facilitating networking between participants and Venture Capitalists.