A Class That Gets Results: Creative Startups Survey Finds Creativity to be an Entrepreneurial Launchpad

MET Arts Administration Lecturer Wendy Swart Grossman teaches a class

Her 10 years teaching Creative Startups: From Idea to Impact (MET AR 789) in the BU Metropolitan College MET Arts Administration program made Wendy Swart Grossman curious: What had become of the many students that had come and gone through her classroom? What do the more than 170 people who have taken it remember from the class, and what lasting impact did it make?

Assisted by her fellow BU MET Arts Administration staff, Swart Grossman began a hunt for answers, creating a survey and tracking down several former students to pick their brains. With just over a 10% response rate, the resulting data makes a dramatic statement on the impact of the course.

  • 62% of respondents consider themselves very or highly entrepreneurial.
  • 93% say the course helped them understand the entrepreneurial mindset.
  • 89% attest to an improved understanding of the intrapreneurial mindset—so even if they didn’t launch their own venture, they continue to use their innovation skills in more established settings.

Citing the finding that nearly 40% of former students have launched their own businesses, Swart Grossman said the results proved that the class was “exactly where I had hoped we would be.”

“Thinking about the greater landscape and jobs of the future, having the nimbleness, creativity, and skills of innovation is imperative for students to not only be successful but to create ventures that address problems worth solving,” she said.

MS in Arts Administration alum Priya Krishnamouty (MET’19) is one such success story, having founded her business, 200 Million Artisans, following her time in the Creative Startups course. She launched her NGO to catalyze self-reliance and responsible innovation within India’s artisan economy by providing access to knowledge, resources, and networks that empower artisan-producers and impact entrepreneurs, typifying the lessons she’d learned in Swart Grossman’s class.