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Dear Franz:

I read your note on Friday and have subsequently had the opportunity to see the responses from others. At the age of 56 I am relatively new to the university environment (1996) having spent the balance of my career as an entrepreneur, and had never stopped to wonder about this question.  It just seemed natural that you would do this.   My experience at the undergraduate level is as follows:

Mini-ventures – in the pas t 10 years my students have operated 1,500 – 2,000 mini ventures that are slated early in the term, maximum investment of a dollar.  The most successful made $12,000 Canadian.

Business plans – This is the term project for my first year management class (150 first year students).  It is also a term project for my two third year new venture classes (100 students).  I don't teach business planning but rather use the business plan as a device to communicate how one wants to turn a vision into action.  The largest business plan was almost 232 pages single spaced and 7 years later is now a successful technology company – Medusa Medical Technologies.  The founder, Chris MacNamara was an emergency measures technician who was majoring in philosophy and neuro science at the time. Yes the final product used for venture capital financing was under 40 pages.  In the past ten years I have used the business plan project with final year occupational therapy students, final year physiotherapy students, final year industrial engineering students and third year electrical engineering students.  In all cases the final products were well thought out and a growth experience for the students.  As noted earlier the objective was not to teach business planning skills but rather to assist passionate young people to achieve their objectives.  The learners "owned" the final product and could see the relevance.  It is interesting to note that there was an inverse relationship between the year of study and the innovativeness/quality of the final product. Perhaps the first year students had not yet learned what they couldn't do?

In summary it just never occurred to me not to do it.

All the best,

Ed      

Hello All:

I'm curious to find out how many of you have had experience writing business plans with underclassman. I know a couple of schools have these types of programs...for example, <st1:placename w:st="on">Baylor</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> has a freshman New Venture Challenge and the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Dayton</st1:placename></st1:place> provides rather sizable seed money to businesses led by sophomores...and I was wondering how these types of experiences have worked out at these and other schools.

  For example, have you had students write full blown business plans (20+ pages) or have they been more like proposals (5-10 pages)?

  Do you devote an entire course to developing these plans during a Freshman/Sophomore class, part of a semester, or do students learn how to do this primarily outside of class?

We can either have a discussion on the Net or you can reply to me directly (ftlohrke@samford.edu) and I can summarize comments.

Thanks for any insights you can provide.

Have a good weekend.

Franz T. Lohrke

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Franz T. Lohrke
Associate Professor of Management and
   Entrepreneurship Program Coordinator
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Business</st1:placename></st1:place>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Samford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
<st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">800 Lakeshore Drive</st1:address></st1:street>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Birmingham</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">AL</st1:state> <st1:postalcode w:st="on">35229</st1:postalcode></st1:place>
Office: (205) 726-2373
Fax:    (205) 726-2464
http://faculty.samford.edu/~ftlohrke 
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