High school fair, panels, workshops
among activities
MURFREESBORO — MTSU
wrapped up its 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Week with a Friday luncheon
following a week filled with workshops, panels, lectures and demonstrations
aimed at sparking innovative thinking and creativity among the dozens of
participants.
One of
the new events this year was held midweek in the MTSU Student Union Ballroom
where four area schools participated in an entrepreneurship fair for high
school students.
Roughly
80 students from Rutherford County’s Central Magnet, Holloway and Siegel high
schools and Cheatham County’s Sycamore High School put their minds to work to
create business proposals and make pitches to be judged by three MTSU faculty
members and three graduate assistants from the Jones College of Business.
Bill
McDowell, holder of the Wright Travel Chair of Entrepreneurship in the Jones
College and coordinator of the fair, was impressed by the students’ creativity
at the fair, which was developed to get students thinking about entrepreneurship
before entering college. He reached
out to area schools in advance so that students had time to prepare.
“They
did phenomenal presentations on the many new venture ideas that they had,”
McDowell said. “The students had ideas ranging from arts ideas to sciences to
engineering, you name it. It was a great success.”
Central
Magnet High School sophomores Chelsey Zhu and Cynthia Yue presented their
business idea for Forbidden Cakery, a Chinese dessert truck based on pastries
that fused traditional Chinese and Chinese-American tastes — for example,
taking traditional Chinese moon cakes and making them Oreo-flavored.
Zhu said
she and Yue had been working on the project for a few months, developing the
business plan and selecting the right recipes, of which they provided boxed
samples at the fair. The hard work paid off, as their display was recognized as
best trade show display at the fair.
“I think
the entire experience was amazing,” Yue said. “We learned a lot about business
and entrepreneurship, especially since we didn’t have a lot of background about
this. We researched a lot, actually contacting bakeries to ask them how things
worked and how sales were. … I think entrepreneurship is a skill that everyone
should have.”
Central
Magnet teacher and MTSU alumna Jackie Crawley-Harrison, who teaches accounting
and personal finance, accompanied the two students and was beaming with pride
as they packed up their display after lunch to head back to Central’s campus.
“These
young ladies had a concept and they just ran with it,” said Crawley-Harrison.
“They researched everything and came up with an amazing product.”
Crawley-Harrison
believes the experience also provided broader benefits.
“I felt
like this was a great opportunity for them to learn more about the business
(programs) here at MTSU,” she said. “I thought this would be something to
broaden their horizons. They’re already excellent students academically, so
this was also a good social experience meeting other high school students
here.”
McDowell
noted that the students also had a chance to see expert presentations and
demonstrations on how 3D Printing and unmanned aircraft systems are being used
in emerging businesses.
Panel
discussions open to the public during the week included looking at the importance
of immigrant entrepreneurs in the state and how to commercialize intellectual
property.
The week
also featured workshops for MTSU students, faculty, staff and the public such
as Thursday’s presentation by noted pitch coach Nathan Gold of the Kauffman
Foundation about how to give great business presentations and “captivate any
audience in 30 seconds.”
Dressed
in a gray sport jacket, black mock turtleneck, slacks and sneakers, Gold
started out promising the audience inside the State Farm Lecture Hall that he
wouldn’t waste their time with a boring PowerPoint or “keynote” address. He
then challenged the audience of current or future entrepreneurs of their need
to differentiate themselves in a current climate where entrepreneurs are
“everywhere.”
“There are
thousands of you out there,” he said. “You need to stand out from the crowd,
not in a gimmicky way, but in a positive way.”
Gold
then spent the next hour explaining how to develop a personal pitch that is
clear, memorable and shareable, emphasizing the importance of storytelling —
“Our brains are wired for stories.” — and pointing to a variety of TED Talk
examples on YouTube that demonstrate different ways to effectively tell a
story.
Gold
said entrepreneurs need to be able to quickly explain to people who they help,
what they do, how they do it and eventually why they do it.
“You
really only need one sentence,” Gold said regarding how to explain what you do
for a living. “If you can’t get through what you’re doing in one sentence, then
you’re wasting people’s time and you sound like everybody else.”
The
week’s events were held in conjunction with the annual Global Entrepreneurship
Week, an international celebration of innovators and job creators held each
November. Sponsors included the Wright Travel Chair of Entrepreneurship, the
Jones College of Business, and the Business and Economic Research Center.
