WVU Entrepreneurship Center offers education, advice and competition
BY EMILY EVERETT For The Dominion Post
FOR MORE INFORMATION on the statewide business plan competition, visit http://www.be.wvu.edu/bpc/index.htm. There’s a place at WVU where free enterprise is cherished, and young, ambitious businesspeople are given the resources to succeed. It’s the WVU Entrepreneurship Center, located in the College of Business and Economics on WVU’s downtown campus. Several WVU divisions founded the center, including the College of Business and Economics, Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, WVU Extension Service and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. The center has developed a 15-credit entrepreneurship minor, an internship program and a statewide student business plan competition. It also performs research, sponsors the Entrepreneurship Club and hosts events for National Entrepreneurship Week. According to Mindy Walls, director of the center, the minor in entrepreneurship allows students to study the theory and practical application of entrepreneurship while required course work educates students on key business skills for both large and small ventures. The minor consists of five courses and isn’t offered to business majors. However, they do have access to other entrepreneurship courses. “The minor is for the nonbusiness students. We look at students that are [majoring in] something else first,” Walls said. “For example, your major is child development and you want to open your own day care. You need to know everything about child development, but there are also specific business skills you need to know to be successful. That’s what the minor is geared toward.” Students must have one accounting component, one communications component and three entrepreneurship components to obtain their minor. Entrepreneurship classes offered include Small Business Entrepreneurship, Business Innovation, New Venture Creation and Rural Enterprise Development. The center also hosts the annual Statewide Student Business Plan Competition hosted by the center. It began eight years ago, but was only open to WVU students. With support from organizations like the Benedum Foundation, the center was able to make it statewide. Students may work individually or in teams in the competition to develop a plan for their business ideas to be judged by a panel of experts. The panel includes professors, venture capitalists, experienced entrepreneurs, high-tech industry leaders, CPAs and business lawyers. The winning team receives the grand prize: seed money and business services to help them start their new business. “It’s absolutely been phenomenal,” Walls said. “I’m so proud [of] what that competition has become. When we first opened it to be statewide years ago, it was a challenge because WVU is the largest college and university in the state. Sometimes the other schools were a bit hesitant because they felt it was something we would dominate, and that was not the case. Each year the number of teams has grown substantially. Last year in the final round we had four different schools represented.” Students can choose two entry categories: innovation and lifestyle. With innovation entries, competitors must develop something new, such as a new method, technique or an altered product or service. Lifestyle entries include product or services already a part of daily life. Entry deadlines for this year’s competition recently ended, and 99 entrants from seven different schools will compete in the competition. Three rounds of judging span across the entire academic year, ending in April. After each round, students receive feedback and instruction. The first round requires a summary of business ideas. The second, and most complex round, consists of three steps: a feasibility study, a two minute elevator pitch at the West Virginia Entrepreneurship Initiative Conference and a series of interviews with business professionals to discuss their ideas. During the third and final round, teams are assigned a business coach and a stipend to work on their business. A 20-page business plan is submitted to a panel of judges and an oral presentation is made. Mary Hunt-Lieving, Benedum Foundation senior program officer, said the competition benefits both students and the state. “The West Virginia Collegiate Business Plan Competition actually proves that with the right training, coaching and opportunities, innovation is alive and well in the state and can help produce meaningful economic opportunities, which can help define the state’s future,” she said. The center and competition also have an ongoing partnership with WVU’s Business Incubator, which supports entrepreneurship by providing an environment and resources to those interested. “Winners of the business plan competition receive six months free in the WVU Business Incubator program,” said Dusty Gwinn, the incubator’s general manager. “Students of the Entrepreneurship Center frequently provide internship support to the tenants of the Incubator. We share similar missions of education, research and economic development. We work our tails off to help new businesses succeed, and to give students the best, most practical business experience and firsthand learning opportunities.” The center also utilizes an internship program, as students obtaining the minor can receive course credit while working with individual entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and small businesses. “Our center is really a student outreach type center. We offer internship programs to businesses that are in the local business incubator. We put our students in there, so they can learn how a start-up business works, so both ends benefit,” Walls said. “We do a lot of things that encourage students’ freethinking. We have an entrepreneurship club; these are the students that want to get together and bat around ideas and want to start things up on their own.” Submitted photo Barry Hodge (above, left), a judge with the Statewide Student Business Plan competition and President and CEO of Secure Linx, speaks with West Virginia Wesleyan student Nick Wilson during last year’s round two competition interviews at the Charleston Marriott. Robbie Loher (right photo, left), last year’s competition winner in the “lifestyle” category, receives his prize from center director Mindy Walls
