In a struggling economy, many small businesses don’t have the time or the staff to devote to extra projects, research or cost comparisons; they’re simply trying to get everyday business done to stay afloat.
For a handful of northern Connecticut businesses, the solution was to bring in Bay Path College students from Lauren Way’s course called Entre-vation: a Hands on Approach to Entrepreneurship and Innovation. With the help of the students, businesses are coming away with new ideas, and the extra set of hands to get things done.
“They get a new perspective; that’s what has excited the business owners the most,” said Way. “They say, ‘Here’s the problem I have,’ or ‘This is what I need help with.’ The balance is finding someone who gives them some creativity but not so much that the students are floundering.”
Way spends time before each fall semester identifying area businesses willing to participate in her Entre-vation class. The class, which typically includes about 12 students, does not have a textbook. Teams of two to three students from the Longmeadow, Mass., college work with a total of five businesses each semester.
“For the first six weeks, we get on a bus and we go visit companies,” she said. “The students write case studies and spend the rest of the semester in the classroom, brainstorming together about ways to help these companies.”
Way said the recession has had many companies telling her they just don’t have the time to work with students, although the project only requires a couple of face-to-face meetings as most of the work is done by the students on their own.
“But the ones that say ‘yes’ get a project that they haven’t had time to do,” Way said. “They all have something in their back pocket… ’For four years I’ve been wanting to do this,’ they’ll say. To be able to hand that over and have the students work on it and at the end get the presentation and a binder full of materials is wonderful.”
A.W. Hastings of Enfield, a distributor of Marvin brand windows and doors, has worked with Way’s students on three different occasions. The company, which sees over $100 million in sales each year, has about 150 employees.
President Dusty Hoyt said Marvin products, on the higher end of the window and door product spectrum, are typically used in new home construction, heavy remodeling projects and institutional projects.
“We’ve been trying to get our arms around the installed sales business,” he said. “So what we assigned our students to do is a survey that got us some answers. They surveyed consumers that gave us some information on how people make decisions — what they look for, and where they would shop if they were going to remodel.”
Hoyt said it was a project his marketing department wanted to start as part of a larger initiative, so when the opportunity to work with the students came up, employees assisted students with the questions and the methodology.
“We learned a lot of things, and confirmed a lot of things we thought we knew,” Hoyt said. “The consumer is looking to go one place and find what they’re looking for, have someone come out, determine their needs, price the product and install it.”
Hoyt said the students learned the consumer is looking for a better presentation of the product.
At Zanger Co., a Suffield importer of Polish stoneware, owner Gloria Smith has grown her three-employee business over the past 22 years to $10 million in sales. Although it runs smoothly, Smith — who sells most of her products online and through the television channel QVC — was interested in branching out.
With an interest in transferring the Polish stoneware designs onto textiles such as placements and napkins, Smith enlisted the students to research the idea.
“(They researched) what could I do it on, what would it look like, how do you think the market would receive it, who is my market, is there another market in addition to the collectors of Polish stoneware,” Smith said. “They came in and learned about the business, understood the product and went back and went to task.”
Smith said she was impressed that the students found potential manufacturers in Portugal, China, India and the United States. The determined the appropriate size for the napkins, and researched what kinds of similar products are being used in high end restaurants.
Smith was able to get right to work to get the products manufactured (in the U.S.) and sold on QVC.
“The value is there’s always a project that can be seen to its own fruition and the opportunity to get a different viewpoint,” Smith said. “Business owners are usually hands-on people, and as small business owners, we like to control a lot of things, but it’s also nice to have a different perspective on it. I think it’s a brilliant model.”
Other colleges and universities think so too. Way said her “living case study” method, an update of the traditional case study method in which business students read lengthy documents about studies which are sometimes 20 years old, is being emulated in other academic environments across the country.
“I think what’s nice about this program, is that the general point of view of an entrepreneur is someone who comes up with some brilliant idea, starts a business and makes a lot of money,” Hoyt said. “But really, the concept of entrepreneurship resides more often inside of a business… the course is really valuable to the students for instilling that in them as well.”
