Think back to your younger days when you took an entrepreneurship course or small business class in college. You probably learned about corporate legal structures, how to create a marketing schedule, assembling a team of advisors, and of course, the all important pro forma. All this was packaged neatly in the form of a business plan that was graded on whether you had the appropriate elements included. At no point was there any reality check on the viability of the business model and there certainly wasn’t any primary customer research done as part of the process. And where has that approach gotten us? Not far enough. Way too many startups fail unnecessarily because of an allegiance to the almighty business plan instead of learning from customers by talking to them during the search phase of their new venture startup. Well, we decided to take a different approach to how entrepreneurship is taught at Central College. Or more accurately, how entrepreneurship should be experienced in an educational institution. And the results were astonishing.
