‘Geeks to Gazillionaires’
Student groups compete, split $5,000 prize for savvy business ideas
Teams take on a weekly task related to running a business and compete to see which one does the better job. Successful executives evaluate the teams’ skills and business savvy. The winning team claims a fabulous grand prize.
While this may sound like an episode of the hit reality TV show “The Apprentice,” teams of George Mason University graduate students are learning to build successful businesses from the ground up, thanks to their participation in a course entitled “Geeks to Gazillionaires,” a collaboration between Mason’s Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering (IT&E) and the School of Management. The course, which combines a semester’s study of marketing, entrepreneurship, finance and organizational planning, culminates with the students making formal presentations of their business plans to business leaders.
Students enrolled in last spring’s course studied all facets of starting and running a business. Divided into four teams, they presented their business plans May 1 to a panel comprised of Dr. Alan Merten, Mason’s president; Skip West, MAXSA Innovations president; George Newstrom, Virginia’s former secretary of technology; Sudhakar Shenoy, chief executive officer of IMC Corp and a member of Mason’s Board of Visitors; and Suresh Shenoy, IMC’s executive vice president. IMC Global Services specializes in offshoring technology-related support services, web development and management, and custom applications.
“This course epitomizes the unique way George Mason tries to prepare our students for the real world,”
—Lloyd Griffiths, IT&E dean
Two of the presentations involved the real-estate industry. The first was a platform for creating online virtual tours of available homes, while the second focused on the creation of a web portal for self-help real-estate transactions. The third business plan outlined the creation of an online search portal for used-car sales, while the last group proposed a new bus system that would allow Loudoun County commuters to access the Internet while traveling to and from work.
For the first time since the course began, there was a tie between the virtual home tours and the online search portal for used car sales. Both teams walked away with $2,500.
"While certainly an incentive, the monetary prize wasn’t the most valuable thing students took from the course," said West. They also left with the know-how to get a business idea off the ground and had the opportunity to interact with and learn from some of the region’s most successful business leaders.
“The course clearly shows students the benefits of our interdisciplinary approach to teaching at George Mason, especially when it comes to learning about the critical success factors associated with new business creation," said Richard Klimoski, dean of the School of Management. "Students not only learn to attend to innovative and emerging technology, but they come to understand the need for building a strong business case for the technology.”
“This course epitomizes the unique way George Mason tries to prepare our students for the real world,” added Lloyd Griffiths, IT&E dean.
Article submitted by Rey Banks, Gazette