The Hero's Journey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology: Dr. Elliot McGucken : Hero's Journey Business, Hero's Journey MBA, Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship: Classical Storytelling rules Books, Movies, Video Games :: Dr. Elliot McGucken: Classical Storytelling rules Books, Movies, and Videogames

The New York Times reported, "McGucken's course (Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology 101). . . rests on the principle that those who create art should have the skills to own it, profit from it and protect it. "It's about how to make your passion your profession, your avocation your vocation, and to make this long-term sustainable," he said. --New York Times Small Business

Dr. E was a mentor at hiphop entrepreneur Russell Simmons' The Race to Be. Mentor Elliot McGucken references that young entrepreneurs have just the same problems as the big studios re: piracy.

Where Entrepreneurship Connects to the Classics Elliot McGucken, a professor of entrepreneurship at Pepperdine University, bemoans that "a lot of schools have dismissed the idea of teaching the great books." In a recent lecture at Pepperdine, McGucken points out that that one lesson of the classics is, "Chance favors the prepared mind. Instead of viewing risk as a bad thing, we can also view it as a good thing."

The classics inspired America's Declaration of Independence, which McGucken sees as an entrepreneurial document. Life has a way of "calling us to adventure," he concludes. Though many entrepreneurs launch businesses based on some "whimsical occurrence," it's their educational and life backgrounds that enable them to recognize the opportunity. Thus, John Bogle was able to found Vanguard based on a business-magazine article, while actually pursuing a "higher ideal" associated with making stock ownership available to large numbers of people. See this blog for more information and a related video. --BusinessWeek Online
Dr. E's book coming soon!
THE GOLD 45 REVOLVER
The Hero's Journey
in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology
A must read for every MBA, JD & DJ!
How to generate true wealth by keeping the higher ideals over the bottom line in books, music, art, entertainment, video games, Hollywood, business, and life.
Available @ major bookstores in late March!

Dr. E's AE&T 101 class appears in Vaughan Penn's music video for Ready to Rise--song from MTV's Laguna Beach, Grey's Anatomy, and theme song for A&E's Roller Girls. Directed by Dr. E :) & check out Artistic Entrepreneurship @ cincom and on market wire.
Check out Dr. E's new class at UNCCH! Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101
Doc Elliot's Dissertation

MARC Artificial Retina Video
Doc Elliot's Dissertation

Dr. E hails from small-town Ohio where he grew up playing in various metal bands, lifeguarding, and readin' the Great Books. He attended Princeton and received a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill, and today, like Benjamin Franklin, Dr. E is a Constitutional Scholar. He currently attends the same law school as Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, and Hamilton--Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Classics--the law school where the only way to graduate is to write a Great Book.

THE JOLLY ROGER: FLAGSHIP OF THE RENAISSANCE:
The jollyroger.com network represents the world's largest literary endeavor by a single author, drawing in over 500,000 people each month to participate in Great Books forums and read Dr. E's poetry, prose, and fiction. The New York Times deemed jollyroger.com "simply unprecedented," adding that the site "teems with discussion, the kind that goes well beyond freshman lit 101." The Los Angeles Times referred to the classical portal as "a lavish virtual community known as The Jolly Roger."

THE PRESS:
Jollyroger.com has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Book Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Raleigh News and Observer, The Charlotte Observer, Home Office Computing, The Triangle Business Journal, The Triangle Tech Journal, The Daily Tar Heel, The Lake Norman Times, The Charlotte Business Journal, The Industry Standard, The Pittsburgh Tribune, The Outer Banks Sentinel and more. Read excerpts here: http://www.jollyroger.com/beaconway/reviews.html.

PHYSICS, POETRY, SCREENWRITING, NOVELS, & VIDEO GAMES:
Dr. E doesn't really blog as he'd rather rock eternity. He's always been drawn to those things bigger than us--the mountains and the ocean, Shakespeare and Einstein. They set him free. And they'll set you free to, if you hang out with Dr. E. Cruise his websites and buy his books, and for a few bucks you'll get the classical education that's essential in making all deeper dreams a reality.

A varsity athlete in swimming and tennis, Dr. E lives for the highest of high adventures--those accomplished with the mind. Rockin' an artificial retina for the blind as a physics dissertation garnered him a Merrill Lynch Innovations grant, writing novels, poetry, and essays has been building the renaissance, and developing software that empowers indy artists and entrepreneurs had him speaking at the Harvard Law School.

Dr. E rocks out in teaching physics, and he's picked up a couple awards along the way, including the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate teaching at UNC.

His latest project, which has greeted him every morning for the past two years and kept him up past midnight, alone with the Carolina moon, is Autumn Rangers--a salue to America's better angels, noble heroes, and rugged spirit of the lone creators, inventors, visionairies, and entrepreneurs who pushed ever westward, and who keep us free. Autumn Rangers is a novel, screenplay, video game, and field guide to the rising Renaissance.

THE MOST PERFECT SILENCE
I know where the most perfect silence is,
Seen it in the wild blue off Hatteras,
A mile out, rainbowed sails in silent bliss,
Looked like they'd collide, but they safely passed.
I know when the most perfect silence is,
Down a dusty Ohio road, high noon,
No shirt on, being burned by the sun's kiss,
Sixteen, takin' my time-- it was still June.
I know what the most perfect silence is,
It's what we say when falling out of love,
It roars and thunders right through the kiss,
Says all that no words can ever speak of.
I know why the most perfect silence is,
It is there for the whisper to be born,
The whisper in her ear became the kiss,
Just a dream in DC early one morn.
I know who the perfect silence is for,
It is for the ones whom we love the best,
It is there to protect them from our core,
By the silent trust we all seek to rest.
And I know how rare that silence can be,
With everyone talkin', it's hard to hear,
But I know I felt it, on the streets of DC,
The sound in her eyes-- it was crystal clear.
And it brought back to mind the rainbowed sails,
And the way it looked like they would collide,
Like two souls set upon fate's iron rails,
But the most perfect silence never died.
--Dr. E
The Books of Dr. Elliot McGucken

Entrepreneurship MBA/Business Class feedback for Dr. E's Hero's Journey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology Class IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM
The night fell fast, I found myself alone,
A DC summer storm was blowing in,
I stood at the tomb, these soldiers unknown,
and knelt and prayed for the rain to begin.
Not for the monuments nor any money,
nor pomp, circumstance, nor the pedant's pride,
the politician's smile, nor lawyer's fee,
for these present treasures, none of them died.
I ran to Jefferson to read the wall,
to make sure that God was still written there,
then to Washington, and across the Mall,
where Lincoln invoked his immortal prayer,
Winded and ragged, lightning everywhere,
I slowed to a walk, pondered what would be,
if God's great Enlightenment weren't there,
we could still be brave but never be free.
I found comfort in the Mall's mud and rain,
without mines nor cannons nor raining shells,
so free from fear, iniquity, and pain,
because thousands had endured a thousand hells.
And I found myself back before the tomb,
humbled by the humbled, with naught for name,
shivering, though they had the colder room,
sans light, nor sound, nor tomorrow, nor fame.
I thought for a moment, what it could be,
the center and circumference of their dreaming,
it must have been the prophet's poetry,
that granted their souls eternal meaning.
So judges and Congressmen, please don't forget,
the reason these patriots picked up swords,
not for perks nor power were their deaths met,
but for honor and duty-- for mere words.
So do take pause before telling a lie,
for there's one more thing I saw on that night,
as the wind and the rain began to die,
I walked away, turned, and beheld a light.
Wil'O'wisp, reddish light, sailor's delight,
It hovered there-- just above the tomb's stone,
As fading thunder whispered to the night,
"Freedom's the name of all soldiers unknown."
--Dr. E

Dr. E's Photography

Some of Dr. E's Life in Pictures

ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP: HOW TO BE A HERO
by Mike Vargo

From The Kauffman Foundation's Thoughtbook
Elliot McGucken has an artful way of teaching entrepreneurship to artists. He explains the entrepreneurial process, for instance, by comparing it to the classic "hero's journey" in myths and epics. Typically, in the first stage of the story, the hero embarks on a quest that requires "separation" or "departure" from the familiar world (here McGucken finds strong parallels to the decision to start a company) -- and after many twists, the journey ends with the hero's "return" (exit strategy).
"Every aspect of classical story, including antagonists, mentors, reversals of fortune, and the seizing of the sword from the stone, may be found in the realm of entrepreneurship," McGucken claims. And there's more. The college course he designed -- open to students in any major, working in any of the visual, literary or performing arts -- mixes classical concepts with cutting-edge practical advice, such as how to use open-source DRM (digital rights management) to keep the ogres from snatching your profits.
The course is called Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology 101. First offered this past spring at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, with support from the Kauffman Campuses Initiative, it has drawn rave reviews from students. The core message of AE&T 101 is that "ideals are real," and in fact are practical: that you don't have to choose between being a starving artist or selling out. By starting a venture of your own that combines high artistic standards with sound business principles, you can "rock your dreams," McGucken tells students; he says that in the arts as in business, pursuing "fundamental value" pays off.

McGucken began his career in science. In the late 1990s he was a promising young physics researcher with a faculty position at Davidson College. But he wrote on the side and had long loved classical literature, from the Greeks to the great novelists. Feeling that these got too little attention nowadays he had launched a Web site, jollyroger.com, to host online forums about the Great Books and to offer his own commentary. And lo, the quest drew eyeballs. Before long, he says, "the advertising income from jollyroger was more than I was making from my professorship."
By the 2005-06 academic year McGucken was involved with several more arts-related Internet ventures while teaching physics part-time at UNC in Chapel Hill. There the Kauffman Campuses mission to teach entrepreneurship in all fields inspired his creation of the AE&T course, which immediately had the look of an idea whose time had come: more than 110 students applied for 40 seats.
Those chosen included undergrads from the liberal and fine arts, plus artistically oriented computer-science students, MBAs, and a law student. They combined their skills on projects, actually starting arts ventures or moving them along. Some showed up with ventures well under way, like Will Hackney, a freshman with over a dozen local bands signed to a record label he'd started in high school. Pierce Freelon, an African-American Studies major and member of a hip-hop duo called Language Arts, was branching into ventures ranging from a Web site on "blackademics" to the design of a hip-hop curriculum for K-12 schools.
And some were talented artists who hadn't yet turned entrepreneurial. Hannah Sink, a student filmmaker who had shot two documentaries in Thailand with grant funding, recalls: "I just had the idea that one day, maybe in fifteen or twenty years, I'd like to start my own production company. What I learned is that I can start taking the steps now. So for me this course was about homing in on a desire I already had, and learning the tangible things: forming an L.L.C., protecting your rights, using technology." During the course Sink and a colleague, Hope Blaylock, started Continuous Take Productions. The firm is still embryonic but the main thing, says Sink, is that "this is real. We know where we are in the process. If and when we take the next steps, we know what we have to do."
Elliot McGucken, meanwhile, has carried AE&T 101 over to Pepperdine University, where he's a visiting professor for 2006-07. Replication and expansion of the course has thus begun, and McGucken has a larger reason for hoping the effort will grow. He sees much of today's cultural industry as being in a "decadent state," with big media firms giving us low-grade movies, books and other product even in the face of declining revenues: "When you put the bottom line above high ideals, both suffer," he says. But a new wave of artist/entrepreneurs -- armed with the skills to assert artistic control by starting and controlling businesses -- could help turn things around. "There's an opportunity," McGucken says, "for a cultural renaissance."

The Wall Street Journal wrote:
Elliot McGucken decided to straddle the two worlds. After he earned a doctoral degree in physics/electrical engineering, Dr. McGucken considered himself "fortunate" to get a teaching job at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and to continue his engineering research.
But then, last year, he won the Innovation Grants Competition sponsored by Merrill Lynch Forum (for an artificial retina chipset for the blind), the virtual think tank of the financial-services company. The contest, now in its second year, gives out $150,000 in prizes for Ph.D.s, and their institutions, who find commercial applications for their research.
After winning the contest, he got to tour the New York Stock Exchange. Dr. McGucken caught the entrepreneurial bug. Eventually, he launched jollyroger.com, an Internet company devoted to his longtime passions: writing and classical literature. --The Wall Street Journal

The Graphic writes: Former investment CEO discusses moral capitalism

Pepperdine welcomed investment giant John C. Bogle to campus Tuesday evening as the keynote speaker for National Entrepreneurship Week USA. Bogle spoke on how businesses have abandoned true ethics and the importance of classical values and a liberal education in the today’s world and attested to his humble beginnings and how they shaped his life to come.

As founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group, the second largest mutual fund company in the world, Bogle was recognized as one of the world's 100 most powerful and influential people by TIME Magazine in 2004. He was also hailed as one of the investment industry’s four "Giants of the 20th Century" by Fortune magazine in 1999.

Dr. Elliot McGucken organized the event. McGucken teaches a class in artistic entrepreneurship in which Bogle’s 2005 book, “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,” is required reading alongside Homer's Odyssey

The theme of a hero’s journey, therefore, permeated Bogle’s presentation.

“Classical precepts are the most useful tools throughout life,” McGucken said. “Ideals are a great a long-term investment, because they never change.”

Bogle reached out to students, urging them to pursue an education and to become a citizen characterized by ethics and ideals.

“Dream, but act too,” Bogle said. “You have nearly all of your own odyssey before you… if you are truly strong in will to strive, seek, find, and not to yield.”

Many students found the presentation to be valuable and could relate to Bogle’s assessment of the business world.

“I thought it was pretty interesting, especially with the moral aspect to see such a wealthy man and how he founded his business,” said freshman Maurice Collins.

Freshman Kamron King agreed.

“To see his humble beginnings makes acquiring that much wealth seem tangible,” King said.

Pages from Dr. E's upcoming
The Legend of The Gold 45 Revolver: The Hero's Journey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology
Dr. E's Artificial Retina Dissertation:
An early treatment of Moving Dimensions Theory (dx4/dt=ic) appeared in the appendix.

The Graphic writes: Former investment CEO discusses moral capitalism