The Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship is an entrepreneurial concept development center and a graduate and undergraduate-level entrepreneurial training center of the Business School of the University of Colorado Denver. The Center offers over 15 graduate AACSB accredited graduate courses, making entrepreneurship one of the most popular MBA specializations. Further, tracks in entrepreneurship are offered as part of the MS in Management, MS in Marketing, and MS in Information Systems programs. The center also offers three graduate certificate programs: 1) certificate in entrepreneurship, 2) certificate in bioentrepreneurship (offered to both degree and non-degree students) and 3) online certificate in entrepreneurship (offered exclusively to non-degree students). Finally, the center offers 10 undergraduate courses, and 2 undergraduate certificates, including the innovative Launchpad program targeted at high school and community college students.
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The Jake Jabs Center is the largest University-related entrepreneurship center in Colorado and one of the largest in the USA in terms of graduate entrepreneurship course offerings. Denver entrepreneur, film producer and philanthropist, Richard Bard provided start-up funding for the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship in 1996. In 2013 the Center was renamed the Jake Jabs Center For Entrepreneurship after Jake Jabs, a Denver-based furniture baron, donated $10 million to the center largely due to his friendship with the center's director, Professor Madhavan Parthasarathy. As of March 2014, this was the largest single donation in the history of CU Denver's downtown campus, and the largest single donation ever made by an individual entrepreneur to a Business School department or center.
The Center is headed by Dr. Madhavan Parthasarathy (known as MP), who is the executive director of the Center, and an endowed faculty member in marketing & entrepreneurship. Sarah Engel is the assistant director. Sarah joined the Jake Jabs Center in May 2013. Kyle Jaccaud-Smith is the director of development who works with the Jabs Center. The Jake Jabs Center's Advisory Council consists of some of Colorado's greatest entrepreneurs including Jake Jabs, Joel Appel (former CEO of OrangeGlo corporation), Rutt Bridges (geophysicist, entrepreneur, and former politician), Joanne Posner-Mayer (inventor of the Fitball and benefactor of the Posner Center), Dr. Lloyd Lewan (former dean of the semester at sea, and Cochair Lewan and Associates), Jerry Kern (CEO of the Colorado Symphony), among others. The center also offers the Rutt Bridges Venture Capital Fund, which funds student-led startup businesses, and also houses a high-quality startup incubator and mentorship program, offered free of cost to students of the Center.
Center Specializations
18 AACSB International accredited MBA/MS graduate-level courses are open to both degree and non-degree seeking students. The Jake Jabs Center takes entrepreneurship from the classroom to the real world and provides hands-on learning opportunities. The Jake Jabs Center's entrepreneurship curriculum incorporate instruction, mentoring, and support from outstanding Business School faculty, as well as from outside professionals with expertise in new business development. Jake Jabs Center courses explore legal issues, social sector initiatives, new venture design, finance structuring, strategic web development, leadership, new product development and business plan creation.
The Jake Jabs Center offers the following programs:
Center Activities
The Jake Jabs Center provides an incubator program for start-up businesses. At any time, up to 10 businesses can participate. The Center also offers the aforementioned resident Rutt Bridges Venture Fund, student consulting opportunities, mentorship programs (including some signature programs such as Coffee with Lewan, and others offered by the Denver Founders' Network, its alumni organization), the Best of Colorado speaker events, and its signature Business Plan Competition, the largest of its kind in the Rocky Mountain Region, now open to any front-range university from Montana to New Mexico. Over $100,000 worth of monetary and non-monetary prizes are distributed each year.