Robert Dooley, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs & Research and Stinchcomb Professor of Management, helped shape the vision for the one of the nation’s premier entrepreneur academic centers, the Riata Center for Entrepreneurship. “I see entrepreneurship as part of a creative process to make things better,” he said. “Students learn to ask: What can we do better? What can we do differently?”

That mode of thinking is essential in small start-ups as well as corporate environments—and in science labs, elementary school classrooms and arts performances for that matter. “Entrepreneurship is unique in that it’s multidisciplinary,” he added. “It’s a mechanism for preparing our students for the 21st century, and for breaking down silos. It is success in action.”