Louisville State of Mind

Last month I bid farewell to the home I created in Los Angeles, packed up the Camaro, and drove cross country with my father and brother on an epic road trip.  We left comfort out of the equation, yet had 4 solid days of bonding time while driving through deserts, mountains, and cornfields.  I spent a weekend in Chicago and a week in Kalamazoo before arriving to Louisville, and had an opportunity to spend a weekend on a houseboat on Lake Cumberland Kentucky with my Kalamazoo buddies and watch Federer and Roddick play in Cincinnati before getting settled into my new home in the South.

Over the next four years I will be enrolled in a PhD program at U of L, specialized in Entrepreneurship.  The program is designed to turn us into 'social scientists' that publish in top academic journals while teaching college level Entrepreneurship and Business Strategy classes.  My initial research interests are in Social Entrepreneurship, however I am keeping an open mind, and will likely be influenced by mentors and the seminars throughout the program.  The next time you see me, I will probably need to wear reading glasses, as my vision is fading with each empirical study I read.

Academic life has surrounded me since I was born. My father is a Professor of Finance and I developed close mentor/mentee relationships with professors at LMU.  I have a new perspective on the profession, especially regarding research in Entrepreneurship.  There are some interesting questions being asked by these folks.  The scientific research applied to build economic theory is starting to fascinate me, which is a bit shocking if you knew me over the past 8 years.    I have a long way to go out here, but I am confident that I am surrounded by the right people and resources to build this career... I just need to work hard at it. 

I am still getting used to life in Louisville, but have found a strong community in Butchertown where I am considering moving to next year.  Louisville is packed with interesting history, and I am just scratching the surface of it.  There is an odd obsession with the movie THE BIG LEBOWSKI, which I noticed in recommendations on my Netflix account when I moved here (It was the most popular movie rented in the city)  There is an annual festival to pay tribute to the movie in addition to numerous posters and books for sale throughout the town.

Also, I recently learned that the most popular song in the world GOOD MORNING TO ALL was written by Kindergarten teachers in Louisville.  It later became known as the HAPPY BIRTHDAY song. So it's not just fried chicken, baseball bats, horses...there is more...much more.  The Kentucky Derby Museum is phenomenal, with a 360 degree movie theatre unlike anything I have ever seen before.  IDEA FESTIVAL is coming up in a month, and will feature 5 days of talks given my global scholars and leaders to encourage innovation and creativity to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people. 

There is vibrant entrepreneurial community that is closely tied into the university, and just like California, people ride bikes everywhere and love their dogs.  There is a style to the city that blends a small town charm with a progressive mindset of a big city.  Yet, as a custom frame store owner from New York described to me, invisible boundaries still exist here, and there are clear differences between geographical regions of the city that can be startling on first impressions.  Near my apartment, boarded up buildings resemble Detroit, and kids on campus have already reported being robbed at gunpoint 1 week into the semester.  Still,  the art culture and local music seems to be thriving, with an art gallery open 24 hours a day.  There is so more for me to see, and it will be interesting finding a balance between work and play out here.

I have an idea for a new business venture that is inspired by recent research into the field of social entrepreneurship.  I hope to launch the venture within 2 years after I raise enough capital and make the necessary strategic alliances - It is a fun idea incorporating my passion for the guitar, education, and building a community to help lower the enormous high school drop out rate in Kentucky. 

I am the new guy in town though, so it will take time to create synergies, I am still trying to learn the local language and suspect that the difficulty of my coursework will be slightly more challenging than the MBA program I just finished.  Our cohort is comprised of 5 other folks, all highly educated with global experience in venture capital, hedge fund management, and corporate marketing.  I am likely the least serious out of the group, and need to be disciplined in time management to succeed out here, the program has failed 2 students in the past 4 years. 

Recently I submitted an abstract for our research in Europe this summer to a conference hosted by NYU on Social Entrepreneurship.  If it is accepted, I will have an opportunity to present our findings in New York to the academic community this November.  I won't start teaching classes until my third year in the program, but will be working as a research assistant to an active researcher in the business school that may give me an opportunity to get published before starting on a dissertation.  Calculus and Statistics are vital to a few of the Seminars I have this semester, so I am switching gears from what I was used to before, which is taking a toll on my social life.  However, I am very optimistic about what lies ahead, the people I am going to be working with, and becoming part of the Louisville community. 

It's not quite a concrete jungle, but dreams have been made here.... just look at Tom Cruise, Muhammad Ali, Colonel Sanders, Diane Sawyer, Papa John Schnatter, Hunter S. Thompson, Phil Simms and Thomas Edison - He left Louisville after getting fired from spilling sulfuric acid on the office floor, only to have his invention of the light bulb demonstrated in Louisville 16 years later.

-J