Singing Their Praises: Entrepreneurship Center for Music and Director Jeffrey Nytch win innovation awards at national, global level

Congratulations to the CU Boulder Entrepreneurship Center for Music (ECM) and ECM Director Jeffrey Nytch!

Dr. Nytch will be awarded the Sharon Alpi Award for Innovative Pedagogy by the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education, and the ECM recently won the Excellence in Specialty Entrepreneurship Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers.

The award honors centers that focus on entrepreneurship education for a specific audience. The ECM boasts impressive credentials as:

• The first entrepreneurship center in the world dedicated to the arts
• The first institution to grant tenure in arts entrepreneurship (Nytch)
• The creator of the first “arts & creative industries” track for an collegiate entrepreneurship competition (New Venture Challenge)

The Center's Certificate in Music Entrepreneurship—in partnership with the Leeds School of Business—is among the most rigorous credentials of its kind, and over 20 other ventures have been launched from the ECM since its inception.

ECM director Jeffrey Nytch was thrilled when he heard the center’s name announced during the GCEC’s virtual conference:

"I feel that it’s a validation of our leadership status in this field. Arts entrepreneurship is a fairly new thing, and even though we were the first one to be created all the way back in 1999, we haven’t always been a visible presence in the field. When I came here in 2009, that was one of the things I was committed to changing, establishing us as a leader, and I feel I’ve done that in the last few years. This was validation of that.

I’m particularly proud because the GCEC is not an arts entrepreneurship organization. It’s an entrepreneurship organization, period. That means that the vast majority of centers and membership are folks from business schools. It’s unusual for mainstream entrepreneurship to recognize this work in the arts, so that’s particularly satisfying."