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A Classroom Path to Entrepreneurship

Published: May 1, 2008 by Newyork times

Nanina’s Gourmet Sauce, a pasta sauce company based in Belleville, N.J., was started, for instance, in 2005 by students taking an entrepreneurship course at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, N.J. Nanina’s products are now sold in nearly 400 supermarkets and gourmet shops in New Jersey and Manhattan, and the company’s director of operations is 23-year-old Nick Massari, a student in that class. The course at Monmouth is one of thousands of similar offerings on campuses across the United States. Undergraduate courses in how to start and run a small business are becoming as ubiquitous as Economics 101. Gone is the conventional wisdom that running a small business cannot be learned by sitting in a classroom. According to the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., more than 2,000 colleges and universities now offer at least a class and often an entire course of study in entrepreneurship. That is up from 253 institutions offering such courses in 1985. More than 200,000 students are enrolled in such courses, compared with 16,000 in 1985. The Monmouth course, started in 2005 and taught by John Buzza, a successful food industry entrepreneur who decided to devote his energy to teaching, went well beyond textbooks and lectures. That first year, Professor Buzza brought along with him a real-world challenge. A chef he had worked with at Nanina’s in the Park, an Italian restaurant and catering company in Belleville, had created a tomato pasta sauce that customers were always asking for, but he had neither the time nor the skills to turn the idea into a business. Instead, Professor Buzza gave his class the assignment of starting a pasta sauce company. “We had no idea how to begin,” Mr. Massari said. “But instead of getting lectured on how to do it, we went out and did it.” The class of 35 students was split into five operational teams: sales and marketing, finance, information technology, research and development, and production. They spent significant time researching the market, creating a business plan, revising the plans and carrying out a blueprint for getting the pasta sauce on supermarket shelves. The next semester, they took a course in small-business management where they learned to run the nascent company as a business.The company began shipping its sauce in January 2006, and Mr. Massari, a stellar college infielder who had signed a baseball contract with an independent ball club when he graduated, was asked by the owner of Nanina’s to take over the embryonic business. Giving up his long-shot baseball dreams, Mr. Massari jumped at the opportunity. “I had always thought about owning my own business,” he said. Starting with one ShopRite supermarket near the restaurant, the sauce is now sold in four major supermarket chains in the region, including Pathmark and Whole Foods. Mr. Massari predicted that sales would hit $1 million this year and profitability would not be far off. Professor Buzza, who is also director of Monmouth University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, said his philosophy is that he is as much a coach as teacher and that his course must have business relevance. “We take the theory and put it into practice,” he said. “Education is the foundation, but application is the affirmation.” The traditional career path of long-term employment for a single corporate giant has become less appealing to a new generation of graduates, as starting and running a small business has become more desirable. In fact, small business is generating about 75 percent of all new jobs in this country, according to a report in 2006 from the Small Business Administration.“What you have today are people who have to think about their careers in a way you didn’t before,” said Tom Tremblay, president and chief executive of the Guardair Corporation, a small manufacturer in Chicopee, Mass. “So it’s essential that people learn how to manage and run and participate in small companies. Small business can be taught, and it needs to be taught.”Marjorie Smelstor, the Kauffman Foundation’s vice president for the Kauffman Campuses Initiative and Higher Education Program, agreed that small business can be taught. The Kauffman Foundation is spending $50 million to finance such programs at 19 universities, including Arizona State, Oberlin, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Rochester. “The bigger question is, How is it taught?” Ms. Smelstor said. “If it is taught purely in a traditional classroom with lectures and talking heads with an emphasis on a theoretical approach, then no, it won’t be taught or learned.” If however, there is a formal connection between classroom learning and hands-on extracurricular activity like actually starting a business, then the concept thrives, she said.

Many colleges have turned to active or retired business owners rather than academics to teach the courses. At C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, for example, Daniel Steppe, a 66-year-old multimillionaire, is director of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship. Mr. Steppe spent 37 years in business, started five successful companies from scratch and, after selling his last start-up in 2001, decided to forgo golf for academia. “Our classes are taught by a group of men and women who spent 20 to 30 years in the entrepreneurial world,” Mr. Steppe said. “We have some theory but our focus is on the practical. We don’t go through all the physics and formulas on how the bicycle works. We just get on and ride it.” Increasingly, the schools are seeking better frameworks and processes to ensure that the pedagogy is replicable and measurable. And some, like Ms. Smelstor of the Kauffman Foundation, emphasize the continued importance of a strong liberal arts education as a foundation for successful programs. “We think entrepreneurship in business schools is often too narrowly focused,” she said. But at colleges with a lengthy commitment to such courses, it is clear that the campus environment plays a significant role. At Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., for example, entrepreneurship is part of the school’s identity. Always listed among the top business schools for entrepreneurship studies, Babson was a pioneer in the academic discipline as far back as the late 1970s. Most colleges do not offer entrepreneurship courses until the junior or senior year. But at Babson, incoming freshmen take a yearlong course in which they are required to start and run a small business. Each class of 25 to 30 students is given $3,000 in seed money and is required to create a company to sell a real product that will exist for the school year. According to Professor Andrew Zacharakis, the students have never had a company fail to make back its initial financing. Most often, the companies make a profit, which is donated to charity. “Our professors do a really good job of helping kids become active learners,” Professor Zacharakis said. “In high school, they sit back and listen to the teacher. Here, the professor is more of a coach. You are given a framework to think about how it works and you are expected to apply that.” On Babson’s leafy suburban campus, budding upperclassmen entrepreneurs are the superstars, says Philip Tepfer, a 22-year-old senior who already has started his own apparel business, Sail (Proud), which sells clothes for sailing. “Entrepreneurship is deep within the culture here,” Mr. Tepfer said. “They are always pushing us to go out and do something on our own.” Mr. Tepfer said his nascent business will reach $40,000 in sales in its first year and he projects more than $300,000 by Year 2. “Yes, there’s risk,” he said. “But it’s better than working at the campus coffee shop.”

Small Business Start Up

By Susan Ward, About.com Guide to Small Business: CanadaThinking of starting a small business but wondering what being an entrepreneur is like or whether you have what it takes to run a business? Or are you planning to start a business but looking for business ideas, how to write a business plan or how to find the start up money you need? Or are you at the start up stage where you need to know how to register and license your new business? From being an entrepreneur through details on the steps you need to follow when starting a business in Canada, here's the start up information you need to successfully start a small business.

Are You Ready to Start a Business?

What's it like to run your own business instead of working for someone else? What personality traits do successful entrepreneurs share? How can you successfully make the transition from being an employee to being self-employed? Here's the place to find out if starting a small business is right for you.

Starting a Business Advice

What kind of business should you start? What resources do you need to have in place before you start your own business? What are common start up mistakes and how can you avoid them? Increase the chances of having a successful start up and a thriving small business with these articles offering advice about starting a small business.

Business Ideas

Business ideas are the starting point for any new business. But how do you separate the wheat from the chaff and find the business idea that you can turn into a thriving small business? Browse these collections of business ideas and see what sparks your interest and fits your circumstances. Or learn to invent business ideas of your own.

Buying a Business

Buying a business can be more advantageous than creating a business from scratch. It can give you an existing customer base and/or the equipment, personnel and even management advice that you need to make starting and running your business easier - especially if you buy into a turnkey operation. See if buying a business is the right choice for you and learn about the purchase procedure with these articles.

Business Plans

Writing a business plan should be one of the first things you do once you decide to start a business. This information on how to create a business plan, including how to organize and write a business plan, and sample business plan templates that you can use, will make preparing your business plan easier.

How to Start a Business in Canada

Sole proprietorship, partnership or incorporation? What's the business registration process? How can you pick the right name for your new business? And does your business need to register for GST/HST or PST? This section deals with the legalities of starting a business, from choosing a legal structure through the different business registrations that your new business will need.

Finding Business Start Up Money

No matter what kind of business you start, it's going to cost money to get it started and keep it operating until it starts making money. This section is all about finding the business start up money you need to get your new business up and running - from Canadian small business loans and grants through how to attract angel investors.

Starting a Home-Based Business

From a legal and structural point of view, starting a home-based business is just like starting any other small business. But from an operational point of view, starting a home-based business is different. Figuring out whether a home-based business is the right choice for you, working at home and home-based business tax issues are just some of the topics specific to starting a home-based business dealt with here.

Starting an Online Business

What's the procedure for registering a domain name? How do you get your web pages high rankings in search engines? How do you build an ecommerce site? What taxes do you have to collect if you're selling online? Here's where to find answers to your starting an online business questions.

Starting an Import / Export Business

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