> 3. Real venturing: Innovative practices by giving students the
> opportunityto start a venture
>> Assuming we head this way, the challenge arises of
> channelling/moderating/enhancing the "real"-experience.
>
> Any suggestions in this regard?
>> Jan
While not an entrepreneurship class, I am having my (under grad) 3
credit org behavior class do a "project apprentice" (you won't get
fired but you might get an "f" if you shirk - grades are partly by
competition with who raises the most money) and fundraise for charity.
This is the first semester I have run this so we aren't done yet but it
seems to be working OK without being a huge time sink. Three of the
four groups have decided to produce and sell a product (t-shirt,
bandana, and I think, an antenna ball with the university logo - that
is under last minute debate by the group, the other group is putting on
an event). It involved comin gup with an idea, designing it, getting
permission with regards to the university logo and selling on campus,
some market research, finding someone to make the item, finding local
companies to underwrite the expenses (the dean kicked in $100 per
group - I have 4 groups of 10-12 students), getting permission to sell
on campus, opening bank
accounts (well fargo donated the accounts and a box of checks per
group), ordering university stationary for the class...
I had students apply for the project manager position, the class voted
on 4. They then got to choose their assistant project manager. People
applied for the chief financial officer position. The project managers
took two hours to choose their team based on class applications - I
also spread out the known consistent shirkers and the athletes whose
sport was in season between groups (also if 2 people mutually requested
each other we tried to honor that - that increases satisfaction). All 4
teams are happy with the makeup of their groups (amazingly so).
Because the groups are larger than they are used to working in (eg 10-
12) they find they have to work in committees and are learning how to
delegate. I meet with the project managers weekly and coach them as
well as give them some agenda items for the week. I do allow 20 - 40
min a week in class for them to meet due to the difficulty of a group
this large getting together. I have webct discussion groups set up so
they have a place for stuff and to communicate (was actually thinking
of making yahoogroups for that).
At the end of the fundraising (2 weeks prior to the end of the
semester) they will need to write a 2 page summary and a financial
report. I also require progress reports (and since I am having them
link what they are doing to OB concepts they have progress reports on
those papers as well). Progress reports helps keep them on track and
lets me know in more detail what goes on out of my hearing.
Some issues I have run into so far are:
1) Businesses, at this time of year have run out of money to donate to
underwrite costs. I need to write a letter to the known local donors
for this kind of thing, telling them what we are doing and why, explain
that there will be students running around town looking for
underwriters in Jan/Feb and Sept/Oct each year and could they consider
budgeting for this...
2) Identifying the charity they are donating for was a much more
convoluted process since I made them made application forms for the non-
profit/pubic organizations to fill out and then evaluate those to
choose (eg had to decide on criteria, make questions match that, make
it short short short). People didn't follow the excel tempate for the
addresses for organizations they identified that they were interested
in and it was an 8 hours cut and paste exercize in frustration (not to
mention some conflicting addresses - 3 applications out of 41 got
returned due to wrong address - the original list had 285 organizations
on it).
3) Several train wrecks on time lines due to apprentice groups falling
behind due to members falling behind so I learned to give false
deadlines for some stuff to allow for this.
4) The learning curve to work in big groups when all you have done is
small groups is steeper than I anticipated - until I intervened they
tried to run everything informally like a small group.
Modifying this slightly you could turn it into a one product business
and donate the profits to charity, the business college's scholarship
or student awards funds...whatever.
If you are interested in more information feel free to contact me
privately..
Carolyn Birmingham
Assistant Professor, Management
University of Idaho
108-885-6612
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