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Using a unique entrepreneurship-focused survey of Stanford alumni, Lee and Eesley investigated how the Stanford Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) at the Business School and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) at the Engineering School affect entrepreneurial activity. They administered the survey to a well-defined population of comparable individuals from multiple industries, in total generating 27,783 responses. Respondents reported information on their entrepreneurial status, participation in angel investing and venture capital, and on the founding, duration, and success of start-up ventures. Respondents also indicated to what degree, if any, they had participated in the CES or STVP programs.

The survey results reveal that overall participation in the Stanford Business School CES had a negative to zero impact on entrepreneurship rates and participation in the Engineering School STVP had no impact on entrepreneurship rates. However, the data suggests that participation in the Business School initiative decreased startup failure and increased firm revenue in the long-term. “University entrepreneurship programs may not increase entrepreneurship rates,” Lee and Eesley conclude, “but help students better identify their potential as entrepreneurs and improve the quality of entrepreneurship.”

These findings provide important context to broader questions about entrepreneurship development and incubation, such as whether entrepreneurship is an intrinsic or acquired trait, and as such, whether firms should seek to develop entrepreneurial capabilities internally or acquire them from external sources. This question equally concerns universities and the strategies institutions of higher education employ to foster entrepreneurial talent.

Lee and Eesley note that it is important to take into account variation in entrepreneurship training programs in course content, emphasis, and other dimensions. Their research suggests that general entrepreneurship education that targets a broader spectrum of startups, rather than one that solely focuses on technology startups, may be more effective in reducing the uncertainty in entrepreneurial ability or improving startup performance.

These findings may generalize to other samples of selective-admission college-educated alumni, although there is certainly need for future work that explores the effects of entrepreneurship education in different institutional environments.

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Lee studies the impacts of AI and robotics across multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail banking, and nursing homes. A trend he sees across most sectors following the adoption of robotics or AI is a positive increase in productivity. This has impacts for both the short-term and long-term relationships between humans and their robot coworkers, or “co-bots.” While it is true that the introduction of automation and robots initially replaces a significant number of workers in sectors such as manufacturing, over time, that impact reverses and there are job gains in many cases.

“The impact of robots often evolves over time from replacing human workers to augmenting them,” Lee explains, “and productivity gains [can] create opportunities for existing and new occupations.” This happens in a variety of ways. In some cases, the use of robotics and automation in one area frees up time, labor, and resources to employ more people in other, higher-skilled areas. In another situation, increases in productivity brought on by automation allow for greater company growth than would not have been possible otherwise. This, in turn, spurs the need to expand the workforce.

Alternatively, supplementing the labor of a small workforce with robotics and AI can also spread limited resources much farther. Lee and Eggleston’s studies of the impacts of robots on nursing home care in Japan repeatedly show that the use of robots positively increases the quality of service that oftentimes-understaffed care facilities can provide to the elderly and infirm. This can range from monitoring the physical condition of patients and reliably delivering medications to providing mental and emotional support to elderly residents through the use of robotic humanoid companions. Such innovative use of tech fills critical gaps that a human-only workforce would struggle to meet in a staffing shortage like Japan faces.

Looking to the future, Lee shares this perspective: “When the automobile was invented, we suddenly had a new demand for drivers. Now we’ll have to see if [automation] creates demand for other new occupations.” It’s an area of innovation and research he, Dr. Eggleston, and other Stanford researchers will be closely watching with their human eyes in the years to come.

Read the original article by Stanford HAI here >>

In July 2020 the Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) published a Policy Insight, Providing Information to Students and Parents to Improve Learning Outcomes, that looks at the learning gains that can be achieved through overcoming information asymmetries. This briefing is especially useful given our current climate where many schools remain closed and learning has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic; it is a time when information dissemination and parental engagement is even more important than ever.

In this article, REAP’s five cited publications help shape the discourse around learning barriers children face globally. REAP studies that contributed to this Policy Insight include REAP’s work on anemia in school children and the analysis of drop-out rates in middle- and high-school students in rural China. However, like REAP’s approach, the Policy Insight highlights the need to address multiple barriers to improve learning outcomes across the world.

J-PAL Policy Insight Summary

Many children struggle to master basic skills despite a rise in school enrollment around the world. For instance, India’s 2018 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that only about half of all grade 5 students in rural India could read a grade 2 text [3]. Assessments showed similar results in many other countries [28]. Programs providing information—about parents’ roles in education, school quality, students’ academic levels, students’ health problems, financial aid, and wage returns to education—attempt to address this lack of learning by making relevant information more available to parents and students.

Results from 23 randomized evaluations from low-, middle-, and high-income countries show that overcoming a gap in knowledge about education often increases parental engagement, student effort, or both, leading to improved learning outcomes. Almost all of the programs in this insight led to an increase in parental involvement or student motivation, which led to small to medium increases in learning. However, disseminating information has not improved learning levels when key health, financial, or structural barriers persist that information alone cannot overcome or when the information is discouraging, rather than encouraging, to students.

Because information-based interventions are typically very low cost and have been effective in many contexts, policymakers interested in increasing learning outcomes should consider if there are gaps in parent or student knowledge that they can overcome. 

Read the full Policy Insight here.