But while this is Narayanamurti's second attempt to bring entrepreneurship to the college campus, the schools involved are very different.

"The flavor may be similar, but they're different institutions and different locations--in Santa Barbara, you're in California, and Santa Barbara is a compact city," Narayanamurti says. "It could be quite similar in that it has a strong flavor in engineering and computer science, but Santa Barbara has no business school."

CEEM participants say UCSB's program was created in part to compensate for the lack of a business school on the school's campus. As a result, CEEM allied itself with the economics department for its Faculty expertise about the business end of entrepreneurship.

Harvard, on the other hand, has a world-class business school, and DEAS officials say they hope to bring already-developed Business School resources to undergraduates across the river who currently have few Business School joint ventures available to them.

Deep Pocket Differences

While it is unclear how the University will fund its proposed institute, CEEM received no continuing support from UCSB.

According to Schwartz, UCSB officials gave only limited start-up support and office space to the program, but does not provide any ongoing financial support.

CEEM is currently in the midst of fundraising both to support operating experiences and to build an endowment. Schwartz says the fundraising has been highly successful so far, but the lack of money is limiting the program from doing as much as they hope to in the future.