BE BOUNDARYLESS

Boundaryless is more than a program or our physical location in the University Union—it’s a mindset and a way of being. We are the mentor to guide you on your startup, and we will help you to be boundaryless in your startup ideas. To be boundaryless is to hunger for innovation, meaningful action, and value creation so much that we can overcome our natural inclinations and reward systems that separate us into silos, colleges, offices, majors, cliques, and comfort zones. We believe everyone can be boundaryless and when we’re boundaryless, we can better deliver on NAU’s broader mission to transform lives and enriches communities.

PURPOSE

We help all students, faculty and staff, and community partners, become innovators who convert their ingenuity into meaningful action and value. We don’t own innovation and entrepreneurship. Instead, we strive to catalyze, coordinate, amplify, engrain, and make them accessible across the entire NAU community.

VISION

Innovation and entrepreneurship supercharge NAU’s ability to deliver equitable postsecondary value in Arizona and beyond. Every student, faculty and staff, and community partner is an innovator with an entrepreneurial mindset and skillset, eager to shoulder the responsibility of converting their aspirations and ingenuity into value–value that we define in terms of opportunity, economic mobility, and social impact.

VALUES

Our values align with and draw inspiration from NAU’s Core Values. In all we do, our goal is to align the ethos of innovation and entrepreneurship (as defined below) with these values as we serve students.

• Student-Centered: Helping students become innovators with the mindset and skillset to convert their ingenuity into a value is at the heart of all we do.
• Integrity: We model the highest ethical standards because it’s right and because the skills we teach must be used ethically.
• Diversity: We champion interdisciplinarity and collaboration and strive for diversity of perspective, experience, and culture.
• Service: We serve, collaborate with, and build value for the entire NAU community and our many broader communities in Flagstaff and throughout the world.
• Discovery: We are intensely curious–we ask questions, observe deeply, think critically, and share openly across all disciplines and communities
• Excellence: Is its own reward; if it’s worth doing it is worth doing excellently.

INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP

We define innovation as creating something new and valuable. Boundaryless, the center, does not own innovation; it’s happening throughout the university. Our work is to foster it across all disciplines and throughout NAU. We do this primarily to help students become innovators and secondarily to the benefit of the broader NAU community[NAU community includes both those on campus and our community partners].

We define entrepreneurship[Entrepreneurship: Theory, Process, Practice, Kuratko] as the dynamic process of converting ideas into meaningful action and value[We recognize the fact that value is subjective]. An entrepreneur is someone who shoulders the responsibility of this process. We don’t own entrepreneurship but we strive to make it accessible for all, we help define it broadly, and we work to catalyze its integration into the NAU ecosystem. While we primarily work to help students become entrepreneurs, we champion its institutional value and work to spread it through the broader NAU community.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are unique but closely related. New and valuable ideas become reality through innovation and entrepreneurship empowers the innovator in realizing their aspirations and maximizing their innovation’s impact.

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