Free advice
MBA students' business plans pay off for clients -- and themselves

By Chuck Bowen

If you were a small-business owner, where would you get $20,000 worth of advice free of charge? And if you were an MBA student, how much would you benefit from 100 hours of hands-on, real-world experience?

Well, if you were a business owner in southeast Ohio, you could be chosen to participate in a competition sponsored by the Voinovich Center for Leadership and Public Affairs and the Ohio University College of Business. And if you were an MBA student at Ohio University, you'd be required to take advantage of the opportunity to participate.

The small business competition -- now in its fifth year -- is coordinated by Susan Abdella, director of the Voinovich Center's Small Business Development Center, and Deborah Crown Core, O'Bleness professor of management in the College of Business. Four-student teams each work with a small business in one of 10 southeast Ohio counties for eight weeks every spring. During the 2004 competition, students logged 10,428 consulting hours, which -- at a modest rate of $50 per hour -- is valued at $521,412.

In choosing companies to participate, Abdella says she looks for those that really want the advice -- not just help with inventory and the like. "The students are there to solve a problem," she says.

She also picks as many as she can that are outside Athens. "We try get off of Court Street," Abdella says, "so students to see what Appalachia really looks like."

The program teaches students business basics, Core says, and also how to interact and communicate successfully with clients -- something that can't be taught in class.

"The students are taught the fundamentals from multiple disciplines, like finance and accounting, and also how to deliver a message (to a client)," Core says. "Those skills are reliant on experience -- there's an art involved. You can't replicate that in a classroom."

Mario Secaira, MBA '04, who worked with the Lancaster Country Club, concurs. He says the small-business competition is one of the best things about Ohio University's MBA program.

"It allowed you to apply the business concepts you had learned and be able to translate the knowledge from the classroom to the client," he says. "You get exposure to real clients and real problems."

Some of those problems can be difficult, and the students sometimes are the bearers of bad news to company officials. One group had to tell the business it worked with that it was facing bankruptcy.

"It's not all pretty," Abdella says.

Neither are successes immediately apparent. A new Web site, marketing strategy or just a name change could take time to bring in more customers.

And companies may not implement their business plan right away or use it without modifications. Such was the case with Miba Bearings in McConnelsville. The company manufactures diesel locomotive engine bearings for companies such as General Motors and General Electric, says Customer Service Manager Mike Martin. The company, based in Austria, has facilities on six continents; its McConnelsville plant has 260 employees.

The business plan the student team developed for Miba examined possible acquisitions and new markets for the company, which Martin says was helpful as a brainstorming step for more research.

"The paper was not used in a literal sense to move ahead, but it was an idea-generation document for us," he says. "It was a good background from which to go ahead with further research."

The teams' business plans can yield tangible benefits not only for the client companies but also for the students. The plans are judged by a panel of business owners, bankers and venture capitalists based on the value of the students' advice. That "added value" can come in the form of enhanced reputation, loans, expansion or the potential for any of those things, Core says, not just profit. After a first round of judging, the top five teams are evaluated by a different panel as they vie for cash prizes ranging from $500 to $3,500.

Core says Ohio University's competition is unique because it is mandatory and gives students so much hands-on experience with real businesses.

"This program is seen at other universities," she says, "but not on this level. It's rare for there to be an entire program; in other programs it's often just a small set of students that have this opportunity."

Chuck Bowen, BSJ '05, is a student writer for Ohio Today.

Related links:

The Voinovich Center for Leadership and Public Affairs

The Ohio University College of Business