What is Entrepreneurship Immersion Week?
Entrepreneurship Immersion Week (EIW) is an intensive, one-week(ish), immersion experience for undergraduates from all disciplines to learn the skills to develop new business concepts and then apply these skills in a team-based business concept competition. Things you'll learn:
- Develop an entrepreneurial mindset
- Practice design thinking & creativity
- Build effective teams & work productively with others
- Expand the network of regional support resources, career contacts, & fellow university students
- Interact & collaborate with a diverse array of mentors, colleagues, advisors, community members
- Learn how to identify & take advantage of market opportunities
Business Concepts
In the course of the week, each team is to develop a Business Concept for competitive presentation on Friday morning. A Business Concept in this sense is a thought out idea, reflecting student creativity, appropriate ideas gleaned from the week’s presentations, limited research, team working sessions and, finally, contact with potential customers and entrepreneurs. It is not a Business Plan with full Pro- Formas, detailed Market Research, etc. However, it should be a credible idea for a new business which follows certain guidelines
Guidelines
- An idea for a business with solid growth potential, an ability to generate wealth for the entrepreneur, and new jobs for Northeast Ohio.
- A period of three years to full regional potential operation should be considered. The idea should be capable of allowing growth beyond the three years.
- Be either a production or service business with the level of technology open.
- Include a description of who the business will be selling to and who will be the competition.
- Describe the business operations, including requisite strengths, unique competencies and structure.
- Discuss, but not necessarily quantify, what features of the business will produce profitability.
- Discuss how and where the money will be raised to start the business.
- Analyze the most critical issues, the vulnerability of the concept and risks associated with the business. Specify future steps needed to make it a reality.
- Business ideas must be original and cannot be something that the Team or a student has developed prior to Immersion Week and/or already used in a classroom presentation, competition or similar activity for evaluation or feedback.
Questions
The following questions should be answered in the business concept presentation:
- What is your product, service or business idea?
- Why is it different and what makes it special?
- How will it be produced?
- How will you sell it?
- What start-up resources do you need?
- How will you make money (revenue streams, a preliminary estimate of revenues in each of the first three (3) years)?
- How much will you charge? (range is acceptable)
- Who will buy your product/service (target market, estimate of the potential market size)?
- Who are your competitors? What are your advantages over the competition?
- Show how your idea is feasible in NEO (wealth or job creation or social value)
- Any other reasons why this idea will win.