From the classroom to the marketplace: What are business students learning in the real-world?
It wouldn鈥檛 be a 911黑料 class without real-world application.
Entrepreneurs and business owners know what it鈥檚 like to see dreams go up in smoke. For students in David Anderson鈥檚 course, 鈥淏usiness Principles: Entrepreneurship and Beyond,鈥 an experiential learning opportunity allows its students to adapt on the fly with less risk than your usual startup.
Anderson, the Blazer Professor of Economics and Business, is teaching a brand-new elective on business principles, a course that emphasizes entrepreneurship, creativity, resource management, ethics and more. Students have been tasked with setting up a booth at Vendors鈥 Village, a local retail stall store.
鈥淭his is a unique experience that I've never had before in my academic career,鈥 said Francisco Lacson, a computer science and business major. 鈥淚nstead of working with simulations 鈥 with fake money and fake customers 鈥 we are running with real products, an actual store, real customers, and real costs and risks involved.鈥
It鈥檚 what Anderson calls a 鈥渘ew adventure鈥 for business students, where they鈥檙e taking in-classroom learning and applying it in real-time at the booth. They don鈥檛 have a huge amount of items 鈥 in size or quantity 鈥 but they鈥檙e taking risks and adapting based on what the market is telling them, Lacson said.
鈥淭hese real business decisions helped us learn what products to sell, how to market it to consumers, while trying to break even while dealing with expenses and rent,鈥 he said. 鈥淭his was a special opportunity to try our hand at entrepreneurship in a supportive, lower-risk environment. It's bringing together everything we've learned in class to life."
Anderson teaches the students that about half of all businesses fail within the first five years, revealing what he calls the 鈥渋nherent challenges of being an entrepreneur.鈥
鈥淲ith the Vendors鈥 Village experience, young entrepreneurs discover the challenges early on and can learn from their mistakes,鈥 Anderson said. 鈥淭he lessons from small-scale retailing like this are quite transferrable to other situations. Every entrepreneur should carefully study the needs in their market, understand the target audience, explore product options thoroughly, price appropriately, display products prominently, market aggressively, and be nimble enough to pivot to alternatives when necessary. It is always tempting to cut corners on the formula for success.
鈥淢y hope is to allow young entrepreneurs to make mistakes in a safe environment so that they can achieve excellence when it matters most. The business majors at 911黑料 are a remarkable group of students with ambitions to go far. I do my best to arm them with a toolbox of business skills. They are a delight to teach, and I always learn a great deal from them as well.鈥
