In a post earlier this week, we looked at the ways in which administrators and alumni at top schools are encouraging business students to channel their entrepreneurial energies amid the current financial crisis. Entrepreneurship is in the headlines at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School this week as well, as the school prepares to host its 8th annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford conference.
This year’s forum, “A 360-Degree View of the Valley,” is designed to offer students just that. Luminaries from across Silicon Valley will join leading European entrepreneurs and Oxford faculty and MBA students for an array of masterclasses and panel debates focused on the big issues and future directions of innovation. The conference will take place on Monday, November 24th.
Smart search engines, intelligent databases, open source software, social networking and web TV will be among the various technologies and trends explored by the forum and its participants. Meanwhile, a keynote panel entitled “The Universe, the Brain and Second Life” will attempt to contrast these trends against longer term, more visionary elements of technology. The global recession and its impact on entrepreneurship, too, will be a subject of discussion as part of a welcome plenary.
Speakers and panelists at this year’s Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford will include Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn; Elon Musk, co-founder of Space X and PayPal; Chris Sacca, former head of special initiatives at Google and adviser to Skype; Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life; and Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, among others.
The forum is hosted by the Oxford Centre of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which provides a range of programming and resources to MBA and undergraduate entrepreneurs. To date, more than 100 MBA entrepreneurship projects have evolved into successful new ventures and collectively raised more than $1 billion in venture finance.
To learn more about the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford conference, click here. For more on entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, click here.
