This idea came to me as a senior student that needs to
secure an internship in order to graduate. Although this is very common it can
be difficult to attain one that is meaningful. It is also uncommon to get paid
for these internships. As a Sport Management major my opportunities for
internships fluctuate depending on the semester because different sport seasons
are taking place. It became apparent to me that this was going to be a
stressful process and I wanted to find out if others were in the same situation.
Opportunity: Through many interviews and seeing many friends
go through the same issue I realized this was an opportunity throughout the
college community. I found many senior who are in a scholastic program that
requires the student to independently find an internship, and I have also found
students who have limited choices of internships. Since internships can help
springboard someone into their career path it is important that they have
choices and opportunities that will push them in that direction. The market for
this opportunity is incredibly large and replenishes itself every year. Since
most students are doing this independently of the university there is no
loyalties in which we would have to compete. I also have encountered another
opportunity in using this same concept to help high school students. When in
high school students are expected to perform a certain number of community
service hours. Also students are wanting to decide on a major for their college
education but often never get to experience it. I believe this market can be
very large as well.
Innovation: The way this service is designed to work is to
create partnerships between the universities and outside businesses to plug in
feeder programs to these businesses. These internships that are supported by
the partnerships will have and application process much like scholarships do.
The idea is that these partnerships will create a more effective and efficient
way to get students the experience they need while also thrusting them into the
workforce. Unlike most products and services, this is no created to be
monetized. We are not selling this service but rather finding a way to benefit
all parties.
Venture Concept: This service will help eliminate some of
the stress of finding and internship for college students. Since we are a new
concept we will only need to help students realize that we are more efficient
than them doing this own their own. We do not have to get them to switch from
something else. Although we do not have a product to package we will need to
educate students on our system. In teaching the students about how our
partnerships are beneficial to them they will want to use our service. The high
school service will be very similar but rather than being paid they will earn service
hours while also being able to test out field in which they may wish to
study.
The secret sauce of this venture is that I want this to
benefit the students. We will be hard to copy because I don’t want this to
become a service that causes students to reach deeper in their pockets to
finish school but rather use the partnerships between university and business
to benefit everybody.
The next step for this service is to expand into high
schools in a similar concept but yet still different. What I mean by that is
that many students in high school are unsure of their future major, and with
this our program will help them narrow it down and gain experience. Rather than
getting paid they will receive community service hours while gaining the
experience which will also help with when applying for colleges.
For myself I honestly don’t know if I see myself as an
entrepreneur. I would love to get this program off the ground so it can help
students all over the country. After that I hope to work for either a baseball
or football team. I one day would love to be a coach or GM.
Unfortunately I didn’t receive any feedback on my first
venture concept assignment but I have received great feedback throughout the
semester. For the most part it has been positive with ideas of how I can make
this a successful idea. At first I received negative feedback on the idea of
having this program in high schools as well so I eliminated it. Once I realized
it would be better to make it more of an experimental thing in which the
students receive community service hours I feel it works much better. This was
the major adaptation I made to this idea.
