At a full-day exposition at Stevens Institute of Technology on April 24, 2013, undergraduate students and distinguished faculty members publicly displayed how they leverage scientific research to create technological innovations to benefit industry, society and the economy -- the core mission of Stevens for the past 143 years.
The annual, campus-wide Stevens Innovation Expo, organized by the Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, drew hundreds of visitors to witness the university's extensive science, engineering, business and humanities accomplishments firsthand.
The 2013 event also inaugurated a brand-new lecture series on business and entrepreneurship. In this inaugural entry in the Thomas H. Scholl Lecture Series on Entrepreneurship, which is supported by a gift from Scholl, a Stevens Board of Trustees Member and General Partner at Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Keynote speaker David Hershberg '68, a Stevens alumnus, addressed the Stevens Community.. Stevens president Nariman Farvardin said Hershberg -- who has founded three companies and is currently CEO and chairman of his latest venture, the satellite communications firm Globecomm Systems -- "exemplifies what people have in mind when they think of any successful entrepreneur."
Hershberg, who recently accepted the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. Entrepreneur Award at the inaugural Stevens Awards Gala, shared his personal experiences as an accomplished entrepreneur and executive and discussed basic lessons learned over more than 50 successful years in business. He said maintaining a set of fundamental values and principles is critical -- from sticking to your core competencies, to valuing existing customers, to remembering the "golden rule," to always acting with the highest level of integrity.
Building trust and empowering employees, especially, have been integral parts of Hershberg's success as an entrepreneur and business leader.
"It's important to push decision-making down to the lowest levels of an organization," said Hershberg, who likes to hold meetings in hallways and who distributes company stock to Globecomm employees to get their enthusiasm and passion flowing. "Often it's not the management, but rather an engineer on ground -- someone who is closest to the customer and working day in and day out on a project -- that knows what's best."
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