Expanding Entrepreneurial Skills to More Learners in Babson On-Demand
Craig Bida relishes the role of teacher and mentor, guiding people as they hone their entrepreneurial skills and develop solutions. As a part-time lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Division with his own diverse career, Bida says Babson is an ideal spot for him.
“Being at Babson has been a culmination of multiple threads and interests,” he says. “Disrupting the status quo to get to better solutions motivates me deeply.”
Bida is a course leader for Babson On-Demand™, a new offering that allows professionals and executives to learn at their own pace. Central to this is the Early Entrepreneur’s Toolkit, a course that helps prepare entrepreneurs to launch their own ventures.
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“A very small number of people actually get to be here on campus, yet the desire for learning about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking and action is vast,” Bida says. He likes that Babson On-Demand brings these skills and tools to new audiences.
Growing up, Bida “always had an inkling” that teaching would be in his life. His parents were both educators, and his father, also a designer and sculptor, encouraged Bida and his siblings “to read the landscape and be curious. He would ask us, ‘What are you noticing? What are you learning?’ ” he recalls.
Bida’s career began in government in New York City, where he saw the effectiveness of public–private partnerships in creating breakthrough solutions. He earned an MBA from Yale and spent more than a decade at Procter & Gamble in brand management roles across a portfolio of billion-dollar brands. A stint within FutureWorks, the company’s corporate innovation group, introduced Bida to leveraging human-centered design to develop new products and services and improve innovation success rates.
“Being at Babson has been a culmination of multiple threads and interests. Disrupting the status quo to get to better solutions motivates me deeply.”
Craig Bida, part-time lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Division
“Design thinking has always felt so natural, going back to those questions my Dad would ask,” Bida says. “Continuous learning is a key aspect of the entrepreneur’s journey. I draw on this constantly at Babson.”
Bida moved on to the agency world, where he worked with leading organizations including FedEx, Disney, the Sierra Club, and American Heart Association. Today, through his purpose-driven consultancy, Think Design Disrupt, he works with “organizations across sectors to define strategies, tell stories, and activate stakeholders to achieve impact.”
Bida regularly seeks out opportunities to expand Babson’s reach—including helping develop the multi-sector Future Lab on Mobility, and teaching in B-AGILE programs, the Venturing Out Prison Education Initiative, and Design Justice Studio, an experiential course in community-based, participatory design and action.
“My orientation is deeply practical,” Bida says. He uses real-world examples and encourages students to draw on their personal experience. Seeing students build their entrepreneurial skills and witnessing their energy and ideas makes him hopeful.
“Entrepreneurial Thought & Action® is a powerful force,” he says. “It is satisfying to find new ways to nourish this mindset and toolkit that people can pick up, carry with them, and use to shape their path forward.”
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