Week allows students to explore entrepreneur opportunities
Business students aren’t the only ones with new company ideas, said Trevor Fullwood, vice president for marketing on the innovation and entrepreneurship council. Encouraging the presentation of these ideas is one of the intentions of this year’s e-Week.
“Every company in some way or another is going to run and operate like a business,” Fullwood said. “Being exposed to this is definitely going to help students in any school.”
Paul Rossiter, president of the innovation and entrepreneurship council, said entrepreneurs are the “backbone of the economy,” and those who only consider big businesses are selling themselves short.
The Huntsman School of Business’s e-Week will begin April 4 at 9 a.m. with speeches by the business school’s dean Doug Anderson and Michael Glauser of Westminster College. This introduction to the week will be followed by explaining e-Week competitions and kicking off the first round of the annual Elevator Pitch Competition.
“One of the biggest success stories from USU that came from this competition is CupAd,” Fullwood said. “They print advertising on the side of a coffee cup – say it’s Burger King that wants to get their ad on the side – and then they give the independent coffee shops free cups. As far as I know they are doing fairly well.”
The Elevator Pitch Competition demands the students involved present their “pitch” for a business idea in 90 seconds. The best ideas will make it into the final round, and the winning team will be awarded a cash prize to start their business venture. This year, $20,000 in cash prizes will be distributed between the competitions, Rossiter said.
In addition, the winners of the I-cubed competition will be announced at the e-week kickoff. The deadline for the I-cubed competition was April 3 at midnight, and students needed to post a video to the I-cubed Facebook page of a solution to a problem they created. Fullwood said one example of this would be a video demonstrating how to better aid developing countries or improve the effectiveness of career advising. The solution that is “liked” the most on Facebook wins, and the creators of the video post receive an iPad.
“One of the business school’s pillars is entrepreneurial spirit,” said Carlie Pennington, vice president of service for the Huntsman Marketing Assocation, “and this week will be an awesome way to get the students involved something the business school stands for.”
The third battle of the entrepreneurs will be the 72-hour Competition. All participating students will be dealt the same problem and be required to come up with a solution in three days.
On April 5 at 2 p.m. in the Romney Stadium parking lot, Big Blue, USU students and others will strap on their skis and snowboards for the annual rail jam, Fullwood said. The event will be supplemented by a business expo where entrepreneur students will showcase their companies at individual tables. Fullwood said the event will hopefully help these students’ businesses to grow.
Charity Anywhere and LDS Humanitarian Services teamed up with the business school for a campus-wide service project that will be set up in the Taggart Student Center on April 6 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Students will be able to take part in a project that will send hundreds of hygiene kits to countries in need.
“It only takes about 30 seconds to make one of the kits, so it’s not long,” Pennington said. “We need the man power. It only takes a couple seconds to really affect someone’s life.”
Friday is e-Day, Rossiter said, and the most event-packed day. Company big wigs such as Mity Lite’s Randy Hales and Lime Ricki’s Nicole Bruderer will speak at 10 a.m. in the Eccles Conference Center.
“There are all kinds of great networking opportunities,” Fullwood said. “We don’t retain a lot of what we learn in school when we are done, so networking opportunities is one of the biggest things for me.”
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu