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Executive Summary
The Villanova Student Entrepreneurship Competition is a derivative of
the Villanova Social Entrepreneurship Competition, which has evolved into
a broad ranging, overarching entrepreneurship competition designed to give
students at Villanova University the experience of innovating, creating
and designing products, businesses and/or services to fill a variety of
needs in today’s world. In traditional business programs, this type of activity
is typically absent as part of any curriculum given the time constraints
and program directives at top universities. We intend to provide a one-semester,
interdisciplinary extracurricular entrepreneurship competition for students
on campus to participate in as a way to incorporate this missing experience
into student’s academic lives. In another way, the competition is designed
to provide a realistic, modern entrepreneurial environment in which students
are able to put together comprehensive ideas and to understand, first-hand,
the process of entrepreneurship in today’s rapidly changing world.
To do this, students will be given a shared communications platform to
collaborate with one another and to develop their ideas beyond very initial
stages. This platform, called
IdeaBounce®,
is an online software tool for students to use as a development component
as well as for the competition to use as a submission tool. As part of the
competition process, students will first be tasked with creating a submission
on IdeaBounce® by uploading a short summary (~500 words) and
a short elevator pitch video (~2 minutes). Several weeks later, students
will submit an executive summary in order to include some of the fundamental
design details, logistics and justifications for their ideas. Those students
who advance from this stage are then tasked with putting together a financial
viability statement, including initial projections of required capital and
all impact statements. The last set of student finalists will then pitch
their idea to investors in a longer oral segment (~10 minutes) in a “board
room” environment. This series of deliverables for the competition is designed
to create an entrepreneurial working environment which is both realistic
and modern.
As this is an extracurricular activity, and in order to comply with our
goal of creating a realistic entrepreneurial environment, the competition
will award prize money to its finalists in a variety of ways. While the
ultimate goal is not to award a winner for any particular reason (i.e. to
move on and create a full business proposal), entrepreneurs must experience
some semblance of competition in order to operate within the modern environment
that encompasses real-world entrepreneurs of today. As such, the prize money
will be substantial enough to drive competition to the appropriate level
which is representative of what is experienced by today’s most successful
entrepreneurs, but will not be sufficient for developing a business. Though
business development is not the goal of the competition, support services
are in place for those finalists who do intend to develop their ideas further
as well as for those who take their competitive ideas to national competitions.
Program Goals
The goals of the newly structured SEC are deliberately general in order
to include as many students as possible in the program. Listed below are
the goals of the competition:
- To give students a platform to collaborate on projects/ideas in
an interdisciplinary way. Today’s world requires this interdisciplinary,
cross-collaborative thinking such that the ideas of today are sufficient
for tomorrow.
- To give students an opportunity to deliver their ideas in a modern
way that is appealing to students and entrepreneurs living in today’s
world. To do this, we have set up our own network on proprietary software
to provide an amorphous feedback structure that allows students to constantly
develop their ideas in a very nonlinear way. As an example, students
are able to post their ideas and have those ideas edited and altered
by group members and general audience members (faculty, staff, alumni)
on a consistent, real-time basis. In addition to this, students will
have the opportunity to deliver their message through a different type
of media when they create elevator pitches via internet video. This
allows them to connect more personally to the people they pitch to without
requiring face time. This is especially critical in initial stages,
where this type of media is often absent from any interactive component
between the entrepreneur (the students) and those they are pitching
to (the faculty, alumni and judges in this case).
- To have students develop a comprehensive feasibility study in the
form of an initial executive summary. This serves to provide the students
with a more typical experience and to ensure that the initial ideas
are taken and developed to a level that proves the idea is feasible
in today’s emerging and evolving market. A financial component is added
to take their idea to a level where it can be evaluated based on its
ingenuity as well as its feasibility and merit.
- To give students an opportunity to work with and network with entrepreneurs
through a mentorship component. This allows students to discover entrepreneurship
second-hand as well as to take in practical lessons of great importance
from entrepreneurs currently working in the field.
- To give students a broad experience with entrepreneurship and to
introduce them to the critical, creative methods of thinking that take
place rapidly in the world of entrepreneurship.
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