Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
414 Stokely Management Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-0545
(865) 974-3161
cei@utk.edu
The University of Tennessee's Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation develops 
student skills, creates experiential learning opportunities, provides mentoring with experienced staff and successful entrepreneurs, and helps students build connections for long term success. For those students truly passionate about becoming entrepreneurs, we invite you to come for a degree and we will help you leave with a business.
Welcome to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Tennessee. In today’s world fundamental change is occurring. A revolution is taking place. That revolution is “Entrepreneurial Capitalism”. It started more than 30
years ago and has spread worldwide. Fortune 500 companies have dramatically reduced employment and with it, the tacit understanding of a lifetime career with a single company. Not so long ago, 70% of college graduates were hired by Fortune 500 companies; 1 in 4 business school graduates took that route. Recently those numbers have experienced radical change. Only 1 of 11 business school graduates go to work for a Fortune 500 company and the Fortune 500 hire only 7% of all college graduates. In their place smaller, more dynamic, entrepreneurially driven companies have stepped in and provided 60-80% of net new employment over the past two decades. According to the Small Business Administration, 672,000 new businesses were created in the United States in 2005. Over the past decade, new business creations have been averaging around 600,000 per year. There are over 26 million small firms in America today that employ about half of all US workers. Even more impressive is that employees in those firms produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than in larger firms. Entrepreneurship and interest in entrepreneurship education is clearly on the rise. In 2008 over 400,000 people took at least one University course in entrepreneurship. In a recent survey of 447 University of Tennessee business majors, 57% indicated a desire to go into business for themselves, many within the next 5 years. They may very well achieve that goal if the national trend continues. In an era when entrepreneurship has become the essential engine for economic growth and for the long term financial health of the region, UT’s College of Business Administration has increasingly focused on the field of entrepreneurship education, research and venture creation. Our Value Proposition is simple. We develop student skills, create experiential learning opportunities, provide mentoring with experienced staff and successful entrepreneurs, and help students build connections for long term success. For those students truly passionate about becoming entrepreneurs, we invite you to come for a degree and we will help you leave with a business.