‘It’s not whether an entrepreneur will fail,” says Dr. Dan Marom, academic director of the Asper Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Business School of the Hebrew University. “It’s when they’ll fail. All entrepreneurs experience failures. The question is how long it will take them to rise up and start again. That’s what we’re trying to do – fail forward. It’s part of the journey.”

As both an entrepreneur and an academic, Marom has had extensive practical, hands-on experience in the field and says the most valuable lesson he has learned is how to learn from one’s failures.

“Failing forward is about the fact that you can learn. It’s not a failure, but it’s a learning mechanism.” Entrepreneurship has a high failure rate because entrepreneurs are fighting the world, and the odds are stacked against them. “In all of the things that happen to us, I hope that we can perceive them as opportunities to learn and grow. If you fail, you fail forward, meaning that you’ve built something.”

What sets the Hebrew University Business School apart: Commitment to continuous improvement

Marom says that while entrepreneurship can be taught, its practical nature is just as crucial as its theory. “It’s not only about talking about start-ups or talking about investing,” he explains. “The best way to teach entrepreneurship is by practice.”

He compares learning about entrepreneurship to teaching someone how to swim. “You can understand the philosophy of swimming, and you can understand the movement of the water, but until you reach that pool of cold water, you can’t understand what it is.”

The fact that most Israelis have chutzpah – in this context perhaps best translated as audacity and boldness– makes them uniquely qualified to become entrepreneurs, says Marom. “Chutzpah is the ability to think boldly about what they can do, because every entrepreneur starts with the notion that they can do better and change things. They want to create a better world, whether it’s for their own community, for others, or for emerging markets.”

As head of the Asper Center, Marom uses experiential learning to teach business school students about the practicalities of entrepreneurship and cites two of the center’s projects that epitomize his philosophy of entrepreneurship by practice.

The first is the Maayan Fund, a student-led impact fund he created with its co-manager, Shir Kahanov, that invests in early-stage start-ups with ties to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem or to the city of Jerusalem and seeks both competitive financial and social or environmental returns.

“Students are getting first-hand experience in investing in start-ups,” explains Marom, “and it’s not in theory – it’s in practice.” The Asper Center is currently spearheading a fundraising campaign for the Maayan Fund and welcomes donations to support the initiative.

The center’s second experiential project is the Rhodium Ventures Award, sponsored by the Hebrew University in collaboration with Rhodium Ventures, Earth & Beyond Ventures, Kyocera Ventures, and the Maayan Fund. The competition awards deep-tech start-ups with investment capital to accelerate growth.

Explaining the role of business school students in the project, Marom says, “Students are acting as VCs – defining investment theses, scouting for start-ups, conducting in-depth due diligence, and advising the board on which start-ups to invest in, and why. They are actually practicing most of the cycle of venture capital, with mentors who are senior investors, managers, and entrepreneurs, and backed by our faculty members.”

Marom notes that the first competition, which ended several months ago, was a great success. “We are now building a bigger platform for start-up awards, based on our partnership with Daniel Recanati, founder of Rhodium Ventures.”

He adds that the Asper Center also fosters innovation and entrepreneurship in research by assisting promising faculty members in conducting their research and publishing it in leading academic journals. The center also brings world-class founders, investors, managers, and other experts to the business school to speak to students about innovation and entrepreneurship.

Recently, the Asper Center brought Paul Gompers, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, who specializes in research on financial issues related to start-ups, high growth, and newly public companies, to speak to students.

An additional significant factor in the Hebrew University Business School’s success is the atmosphere of teamwork it fosters among its students.

“We do project-based learning activities so students can learn together,” says Marom. “In today’s world, it’s all about groups, and it’s all about teams. We build teams of students with heterogeneous backgrounds, understanding how they can work as teams, how they make it a success, and how they overcome all sorts of challenges to make it happen together.”

Maron suggests that what sets the business school apart is its commitment to continuous improvement. “I think that what distinguishes us is the fact that we are hungry to do better, to learn from our mistakes, to get the right feedback, to integrate others internally within what we do with our students and with the community.”

The City of Jerusalem, says Marom, is uniquely positioned to become an attractive hub for entrepreneurship. “More and more companies are targeting governmental clientele in the defense sector and other sectors, because Jerusalem has a critical mass of higher education in R&D centers, and because we have diversified groups of potential entrepreneurs.

“We want to be highly integrated within Israeli society, so we’re supporting the Jerusalem ecosystem. We’re supporting the university, and we’re supporting all sorts of underserved communities.”

Marom suggests that there is a relationship between entrepreneurship and the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world. In his view, entrepreneurship does not only lead to a better bottom line for a company but can also make a positive impact on society.

“Venture capital investing is not only for capital purposes. It delivers more than financial results, and technology can serve as a wonderful accelerator for doing good across various industries and audiences. Technology can be used for energy, water, agriculture, and medicine. We can take innovative technology and bring it to market.”

The Asper Center teaches impact investing, says Marom.

“We’re talking about the fact that venture capital and investing are not only for capital purposes. Technology can scale across nations, across the developing and the developed world, and across all sorts of audiences. Technology can serve as a wonderful accelerator for doing good across various industries and various audiences.”

Marom predicts that the future of entrepreneurship extends beyond artificial intelligence.

“It can create jobs and prosperity and enable entrepreneurs from various countries and from various backgrounds to push forward for venturing.” Marom is currently working on a book that traces the history of crowdfunding and predicts how it will be used in the next 20 years.

In the near future, he suggests, crowdfunding will become a mainstream source of capital not only for philanthropy but also for physical products and will become part of what he terms “the new normal in fundraising for innovative companies or ideas.

“I believe it will be in synergy with cryptocurrency, with new sources of payments, and with advancements in technology. In the future, crowdfunding will create change in the lives of millions by connecting these dots – technology, finance, community, and innovation – all working together to create change.”

This article was written in cooperation with Canadian Friends of Hebrew University.