Students create successful business within three months

Posted: June 17, 2013 1:30 p.m.

Professor Chris Street's students launched fully-operational businesses that give back.
Professor Chris Street's students launched fully-operational businesses that give back. Photo: U of R Photography

In professor Chris Street’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship class you enter as a student and leave an entrepreneur.

“It’s cool and it’s challenging,” says Street, who provides students the opportunity to participate in the Online Venture Challenge (OVC) which groups them together to launch and operate a revenue-generating online business in three months.

Eight groups launched online businesses, says Street, all of which were required to be socially-oriented and donate profits to registered charities.

One of the businesses in particular created what Street calls a “social community”. The business, named “Breakfast with the Birds” sold packaged birdfeeders and birdseed that customers could have delivered as a gift. “It was a great alternative to sending flowers,” says Street.

The team sold nearly $1,000 in product within a month.

“They purchased the bird feeders at the dollar store,” says Street, “and the birdseed came from a seed plant – it was actually the seed that was falling on the floor and being thrown away so the students secured it for free.” As Street explains, the profit margins were high in this case and the team donated their earnings to Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba, known for its many species of birds.

“This was a great idea – the team found a social cause that linked with the business strategy – and were able to prove that businesses can provide tangible rewards to society and still make a healthy profit,” he says. Plus, people got engaged, he explains. Customers were taking photos of themselves having ‘breakfast with the birds’ or watching their new ‘pets’ from their windows.

Street says that the OVC changes the way students engage in the classroom. “They take ownership”, he says. At the beginning of class students are excited to develop and launch a business but they soon learn about the pressures of opening a fully-functioning business, meeting with retailers, establishing contracts and building the online selling platform, he adds. “But when they make their first sale it’s real and exciting,” he says.  

For Street, the biggest reward is seeing students “understand concepts both at the theoretical level and at the practical level”. The real understanding, he explains, comes when the two are put together.

Street plans to offer the class again in the Fall 2013 semester. BUS 304 Innovation and Entrepreneurship course is open to all students with at least 60 credit hours completed.