Michael Goldberg’s fifth Fulbright award is a little bit like the first.
“Same corner of the world, and dedication to developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Goldberg, associate professor of design and innovation at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management and executive director of the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship.
Recently named a Fulbright winner for an unprecedented fifth time—with a Fulbright Specialist grant—he’ll travel to Cambodia this summer. Goldberg’s Fulbright host is the National University of Management (NUM) in Cambodia, where he’ll work with students and faculty associated with their master’s program in global innovation management.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and citizens of other countries.
Goldberg’s Fulbright Scholar award to Vietnam, sparked his idea for the creation of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called “Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies. Goldberg was asked by the Vietnamese government to present a seminar on how Vietnam might become more like Silicon Valley. Instead, he described how Vietnam was much more like Cleveland, and building an entrepreneurial ecosystem would look much more like Northeast Ohio than the Bay Area.
This approach became the basis of Goldberg’s Beyond Silicon Valley MOOC which has attracted over 175,000 students from 190 countries with subtitles in 16 languages (including Vietnamese and Khmer) which is the most on the Coursera platform.
Goldberg initially visited Cambodia in 2012 at the invitation of the US Embassy in Phnom Penh and conducted a program on entrepreneurship at the NUM. In 2022, Goldberg paired NUM graduate students with his Weatherhead School of Management’s MBA students on teams to come up with startup business ideas aimed at promoting tourism related to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Revealing Krishna exhibition which featured artifacts from Cambodia.
During his upcoming Fulbright, Goldberg will work with students and faculty from NUM’s Master’s Program in Global Innovation Management and lead programs associated with his Beyond Silicon Valley workshops along with leaders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cambodia.
“We are very much looking forward to welcoming Professor Goldberg to the National University of Management in Phnom Penh this July as part of the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program,” said Stephen Paterson, associate professor and vice rector and chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer at the National University of Management in Cambodia. “Michael will be teaching an intensive entrepreneurship course in our Master’s Program in Global Innovation Management in addition to offering some training seminars for our faculty members.”
Goldberg’s previous Fulbright awards sent him to Hanoi (Vietnam); Windhoek (Namibia); Canary Islands (Spain); and the Azores Islands (Portugal)—all focused on supporting the growth of entrepreneurship.
“It turns out that most of the world looks more like Cleveland than San Francisco, and so I think part of the success of the class has been connecting with communities that are, frankly, like Cleveland, struggling to build support for startup companies and entrepreneurs,” he said.
“The Fulbright Program’s goal of developing international understanding depends on you and your commitment to establishing open communication and long-term cooperative relationships,” Donna Brazile, chair of the Fulbright Program, wrote to Goldberg in the announcement.
The university has had more than 50 faculty Fulbright winners since 1990.
For more information on applying to the Fulbright program, you can find details for students, as well as faculty opportunities through the Fulbright Specialist Program or the Fulbright Scholars Program.
For more information, contact Colin McEwen at colin.mcewen@case.edu.