China Post, Tuesday May 30, 1972  (CHINA POST Photos by Sherman Liu) 

"Economic Minister Sun Yun-suan yesterday appealed to Chinese entrepreneurs to stress the importance of management development. Speaking at the opening of the three-day seminar on management development, Sun called for training of more competent management personnel in order to develop the nation's industries."

LOOKING BACK

Upon completion of that project, Dr. Omps was hired by the Ford Foundation to use his business and academic expertise to assist in developing and monitoring entrepreneur development programs at the Small Industries Extension Training Institute (SIET Institute), a Ford Foundation grant recipient located in Hyderabad, India. Still in existence today, this organization is now known as the National Institute for Small Industries Extension Training (NISIET).

It was during his tenure with Ford that Dr. Omps began his groundbreaking work in the field of enterprise creation and growth management. It is interesting to note that Dr. Omps was on post when renowned Harvard psychology professor Dr. David C. McClelland came to India to field test his hypothesis on entrepreneurship development. As virtual colleagues, the two men worked in the same basic area - entrepreneur development.  Each, however, came to different conclusions.

Where Dr. McClelland concluded, through a series of tests, that it was possible to train practically anybody to become a successful entrepreneur (using the classic definition of the term entrepreneur), Dr. Omps' immediate goal was to discover and determine which factors played the greatest role in driving eventual success of known entrepreneurs.  Dr. McClelland felt, after examining the data gleaned from the battery of tests he administered during that time, that he had sufficient proof to validate his "Anybody can be trained to become an entrepreneur," hypothesis.  He returned to Harvard and his teaching career leaving behind him a theory that was rapidly developed into programs for the express purpose of creating a virtual army of successful entrepreneurs … something that, based upon a study conducted in 1991, never occurred.

On a diverging path from that taken by Dr. McClelland, Dr. Omps continued his research into the characteristics that distinguished successful entrepreneurs from the entrepreneur that, clearly, Dr. McClelland had envisioned when he set out to test his theory.  What he learned over the course of the next decade formed the basis and the direction for the institution that is today known as the International University of Entreprenology.

Highlights

Upon returning to the United States in 1966, Dr. Omps accepted a teaching position with the College of Business, University of Hawaii, in Honolulu. During his tenure at UH, he was invited to be a guest lecturer/professor by several colleges, universities, professional organizations, business organizations and governmental agencies both in the United States and abroad.  The universities he worked with include Northeastern University, Northwestern University, University of Colorado, University of Pittsburgh, California State University-Los Angeles, University of Southern California and University of California.

In the early 1970's, Dr. Omps was contacted by China Management Consultants (CMC), Taipei, Taiwan and asked to present a series of business seminars to select government officials and a number of the country's most successful business leaders. Knowing that traditional college graduate level courses would be inappropriate for such a group, he created a program that he was confident would challenge and benefit such an experienced and influential group.

What emerged from this beginning was a program so unique, so different from the traditional business oriented courses being taught that he could find no word to characterize it. In essence, it was rooted in entrepreneurship - a widely used term - but it was far more than that. It addressed the cycle of business, but at an entirely new level … above any he had experienced or taught in all his years as businessman and professor.

In early 1972, the Minister of Economic Affairs for the government of Taiwan gave the keynote address launching the program that introduced an entirely new discipline to the world … Entreprenology - The Discipline of Change and Growth Management.

Later that same year, Dr. Omps and a close personal friend, Orrin G. Hatch (a friend and colleague who went on to be elected to and continues to serve in the United States Senate), formally incorporated the International University of Entreprenology (IUE).

From the outset, the primary goal of the IUE has been to offer unique, appropriate and practical degree and non-degree programs to the men and women with the capacity to make a difference; the men and women with the ability to create successful enterprises thereby creating jobs and stimulating economic growth.