A Win-Win

A new innovation consulting course helps UW students learn business consulting while helping Wyoming businesses thrive.

Everyone loves a win-win situation, and the University of Wyoming’s new innovation consulting course, offered by Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Director Robert Macy, does just that. The course provides students hands-on real-world business consulting experience, and it offers clients the assistance they need to grow their operations. 

“The course pairs groups of undergraduates with companies or government officials who want help to advance their companies or solve problems,” Macy says.

The course is modeled after the Small Business Institute’s (SBI) programming. The SBI model operates at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the United States (see sidebar). The institutes began in 1972 and have grown since then, offering students practical training while providing a valuable community service to small businesses — the backbone of many local economies. With guidance from professors, more than 2,000 student teams a year provide assistance to 400-plus businesses. Their more than 105,000 hours of service create a $5 million-plus annual economic impact. SBI also offers an annual conference where students can compete for national recognition.

UW President Ed Seidel saw a similar program in action at the University of Illinois and wanted to see a program launched at UW. This spring, the first innovation consulting course was offered in the College of Business to 12 students from various majors.

Initially, the students formed four teams of three to work with four clients, including two selected by the Wyoming Small Business Development Center, a startup company led by a former Walt Disney World stuntman, and a project with the producers of “Grinding Gear,” a video game-focused YouTube and podcast series.

Through their semester-long projects, students learn to apply their people skills as team members and consultants, examine business issues from the viewpoint of several disciplines, engage in real-world problem solving, and use analysis and creativity.

“The students meet with their client to learn about their business and any potential issues they’re having that could be examined in a semester,” Macy says. “Then they write up an engagement letter and scope of work. The projects could be anything from a business plan to a marketing issue or help with product design. For government, it could be helping to solve housing or other local issues. The students will work on it for the semester. At the end, they will produce both a written document and a presentation.”

In future semesters, the innovation consulting course will continue to partner with the Wyoming Small Business Development Center. While the initial course offers students credit as a topics class, Macy hopes it will eventually count toward the interdisciplinary entrepreneurship minor at UW and fit into other majors and minors.

History of the Small Business Institute

The Small Business Institute (SBI) began in 1972 as a cooperative pilot venture between the U.S. Small Business Administration and Texas Tech University. After the pilot year, about 20 leading universities and colleges joined in the innovative, faculty-guided, student-based, field case consulting program. In 1976, the first stand-alone SBI conference was convened in Orlando, Fla.

In 1996, the SBI program became independent of the Small Business Administration. The SBI program is now self-funded by participating schools through a variety of sources, including college and university support, nominal client fees, student fees, donations, and state and local grants. To date, more than 500 universities and colleges have participated.

The SBI program bridges the gap between typical classroom learning and the entry-level training that firms critically need. Teams of qualified university students, under expert faculty supervision, provide consulting to small business owners and managers, as part of their educational training at the university. The emphasis is on practical, realistic and affordable solutions to problems confronting small businesses.

Since the program’s inception, the Small Business Institute Directors’ Association has served as the coordinating body for the SBI program. Member schools provide small-businesses consulting experience for their students and management assistance to small businesses in their communities using the SBI model. Some SBI programs work with community organizations to develop economic development strategies to bring businesses to the communities as well as to develop businesses that already exist.

Learn more at www.smallbusinessinstitute.biz.

Small Business Development Centers

The U.S. Small Business Administration funds SBDC programs across the country such as the Wyoming SBDC. These programs deliver professional, high quality, individualized business advising and technical assistance to existing small businesses and pre-venture entrepreneurs. SBDCs provide problem-solving assistance to help small businesses access capital, develop and exchange new technologies, and improve business planning, strategy, operations, financial management, personnel administration, marketing, export assistance, sales and other areas required for small business growth and expansion, management improvement, increased productivity and innovation.