Creating Entrepreneurial Community Colleges: A Design Thinking Approach

In this book, Carrie B. Kisker illustrates how community colleges can utilize design thinking to identify and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities, and experiment with the internal changes necessary to optimize outcomes for stakeholders. Kisker outlines a process whereby college leaders can empower faculty and staff to think creatively about how to reduce their institution’s dependence on state allocations in ways that are not only consistent with the college’s mission and values, but also provide the greatest likelihood for institutional and student success.

The book presents evidence drawn from case studies at four community colleges along with in-depth qualitative interviews with leaders, faculty, and staff who have been involved in their institution’s entrepreneurial efforts. The featured colleges-Maricopa County Community Colleges (AZ), Tarrant County College (TX), North Iowa Community College, and Valencia College (FL)-all have long histories of engaging in entrepreneurial initiatives.

By telling the stories of several influential community college leaders’ experiences with entrepreneurialism-using design thinking as a framework for understanding their successes and failures-Kisker provides a roadmap for colleges to move beyond their historical pattern of incremental responses to external pressures, and instead begin to innovate in a creative, mission-oriented approach.