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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Entrepreneurship Educator Newsletter

 

May 2010

Another academic year is over – time for some of us to take some time off. But before you know it, the time to begin sharpening the saw and get ready for fall will be upon us.

This month we offer some ideas to help with your planning for the coming year. The first two are classroom exercises that I picked up while conducting entrepreneurship training for non-business faculty this month at the College of Wooster and the University of North Texas. We also feature an innovative program that integrates fashion and entrepreneurship and an elevator pitch competition that was used to promote to high school students.

We welcome innovations and ideas in entrepreneurship education from your programs that you would like to share with your colleagues around the globe. Just send them along to me atjeff.cornwall@belmont.edu
Points of Pain Exercise
This first exercise was developed by Tony Mendes, who is the Director of theMurphy Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of North Texas.

Many entrepreneurial ideas come from technological breakthroughs, flashes of insight and revolutionary concepts. However, the reality is that most entrepreneurial ventures are created out of frustration, disappointment and discomfort of one sort or another. "Points of pain” is an exercise that Tony Mendes uses in his entrepreneurship class at UNT.

The purpose of the exercise is simply to broaden the students’ perspectives on opportunities that can come out of flaws in products and services. It has students seeking opportunities out of the frustrations, or points of pain, in day to day living.

Students are assigned to take time between class meetings, usually a day or two, to look around and assess opportunities for improving or developing new products and services that solve or minimize pain in the marketplace.Possible things to look for:
  1. Complaints they have or gripes they hear from friends or people in the community.
  2. Inconvenience they experience when purchasing a product or in acquiring a service.
  3. A product or service “flaw” that is difficult to deal with, such as packaging that takes way too much time to unravel.
  4. The pain that comes from paying way too much (i.e., getting “ripped off”) for a product or service.
  5. Money that seems to be “lost” with little value returned.
  6. Something that can make life easier.
  7. A product or service that can contribute to health or well-being (literally removing pain of one kind or another).
  8. A simpler way to access a product or service (less hassle).
    Students come to class with a list of at least 10 items they have identified (the lists will likely be much longer).
    Then they conduct a mini competition with 5 points extra credit going to the best “point of pain” as voted by the students in class. Often time the ideas developed by the students in this exercise will result in the next phase opportunity assessment or product/service conceptualization.

    Openness Exercise
    The second exercise this month comes from James Levin, who is the Director of theCenter for Entrepreneurship at College of Wooster. Levin comes to entrepreneurship from the arts and non-profit worlds. He brings to his classes many creativity exercises.

    His Openness Exercise is actually a series of introductory exercises inviting the students to “open up” their senses and observation skills.
    1. With the students seated in a circle, have them look around at the other students in the class. Jot down five things that you haven’t noticed before about five other students (one impression/student). Students will notice things like how someone is shaping their hair, someone who has a band-aid on, someone with mismatching socks, a logo on a shirt, etc.
    2. Ask that when they come to the next class, to notice five “somethings” that they haven’t noticed before, on the way to the class -- the sky, clouds, the breeze, odors, sounds, footprints, broken branches, one color of something juxtaposed to something else. The instructor may want to offer several cues like these or leave it more open.
    3. Bring grapes and raisins to class. Have each student select one grape, red or green. Tell them to study it. Write about it. Then, very slowly, eyes closed, each student places the grape in his/her mouth. They are not allowed to “chomp.” They must very slowly, with careful awareness, play with the grape, finally biting into it. Then they write a detailed memory paper of their experience.
    4. Repeat this same process with a raisin.
    When working with students on creativity, such openness exercises are a good starting point for the semester to help make future work on creativity more productive.

    Entrepreneurship Education for Fashion Professionals

    I have seen a strong interest in entrepreneurship education in fashion programs across the country. These courses offer ideas for those wishing to offer specific courses on fashion entrepreneurship in any educational setting, be it undergraduate, graduate, or continuing education.

    Thefirst courseprovides general content on entrepreneurship and business development within the fashion industry.

    This course focuses on three main elements -- the founding of a new fashion business, the development stages of a fledgling business, and how to create professional management within a maturing small fashion business. The course has the fashion entrepreneur prepare and critically evaluate themselves and possible opportunitiesbeforemoving to launch a new fashion business.

    Thesecond coursefocuses on the entrepreneurial opportunities within the global context of the fashion industry.

    Fashion is truly a global industry. This course examines entrepreneurship and opportunity identification in the context of internationalization and global economics. It has students examine the factors that facilitate the entrepreneurial process within small and medium enterprises within the global fashion economy.

    This program offers a good model for any program that seeks to offer entrepreneurship education for professionals within a specific industry. While not all industries have globalization as a focus point, the curriculum highlights the need to tailor such programs to meet the current issues facing a given industry.

    Elevator Pitch Program as a Promotional Tool
    Through a grant received from theColeman Foundation,Southwestern Illinois College(SWIC) in Belleville, IL, along with the Entrepreneurship Center atSouthern Illinois University–Edwardsville(SIUE), set up an elevator pitch competition that also serves as a great promotional tool for their programs.

    The competition was open to area high school students as well as students from SWIC and SIUE. Twenty-five applicants were selected to compete in an elevator pitch competition with three local entrepreneurs serving as judges. In addition to the Coleman Foundation grant, the local SCORE chapter agreed to provide financial support for the competition event.

    Including high school students with students from their campuses is an innovative means of promoting the entrepreneurship programs at both colleges. The high school students get to participate in a fun entrepreneurship event, while getting exposed to current college students enrolled in both programs. Students enrolled in your program make wonderful ambassadors, so offering an opportunity for a prolonged interaction with the high school participants reinforces the “selling” of the program by these current students.

    A kick-off event in late January was used to announce the program and to begin publicity and marketing to encourage students to submit a description of their business idea online. An e-mail "blitz" to local high schools, along with a mailing of flyers to high schools, helped market the competition. Flyers were posted on the SIUE and SWIC campuses, and press releases were used to get the word out. In addition, professors were asked to inform students about the competition.

    As a result of the marketing, a total of 70 applications from students came in by the April 5th deadline. Between the deadline and April 16, the judges met to select 25 applicants to pitch their ideas on the SWIC campus at an event on April 26. Fifteen winners were selected and each one received a $500 award from funding out of the Coleman Foundation grant. A reception followed so all participants were able to interact with the judges as well as SCORE counselors for additional feedback on their ideas.

    Entrepreneurship Position Listings
    Click hereto see all new and recently posted positions. Send your Entrepreneurship faculty listings toJeff Cornwallfor a free listing at our site.

    Conferences, Grants, Calls, and Competitions
    To see a full list of conferences, grants, calls for papers and competitionsclick here. For a free listing of your event or grant, or to announce a “Call for Papers”send your listing toJeff Cornwall.

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