Prof Bowers, who is nearing the end of a six-week stay in New Zealand, is professor of marketing and entrepreneurship and also academic director at the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Rollins College, in central Florida.
He has been selected as the J.A. Valentine Fellow, a visiting professorship established in 1990 to encourage people of eminence in the field of business to visit the University of Otago.
While in Otago, he had been lecturing and talking to people about entrepreneurship and, in some cases, marketing issues concerning start-up organisations.
He had an opportunity to talk to many people both at the university and throughout Dunedin and had seen "earnest interest" in collaboration and "trying to get everyone pulling in the same direction".
He had talked to many young people, including making a presentation at the Audacious Challenge, where participants showed much energy and excitement, he said.
To become an entrepreneur required hard work and it was not a glamorous pursuit.
"It's not sitting at a cafe looking at your Lamborghini. It's long, long hours by yourself, with a lot of people telling you you're a fool," he said.
Although he wanted to be encouraging, Prof Bowers said people also had to be realistic and prepared.
Becoming an entrepreneur required perseverance, customer knowledge and coming up with an "elegant solution".
Entrepreneurship globally had "just exploded" in terms of popularity and it had become a very powerful idea.
In the United States, many people no longer wanted to work for others because of the economic crisis of the past several years, and instead were "creating their own path".
It was Prof Bowers' first visit to New Zealand, although he had wanted to visit since he was a child, he said.
He enjoyed being in a university town and he and his wife had been staying with first-year students at UniCol, which had been "a delight", he said.
"It has been a tremendous amount of fun. The staff there are great, the students, for the most part, are very well behaved, and always entertaining. We've really enjoyed it."
He was also impressed with the university, describing it as a "real prize" for the city.
