Virginia Tech students learn entrepreneurial skills

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academics 1:16 Virginia Tech students learn entrepreneurial skills

By:

Dawn Jefferies

6 Mar 2019 378

Virginia Tech students involved in The Wood Enterprise Institute, a class in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, design, produce, and market a wood-based product each year. This year’s item: A custom dog bowl holder.

[00:00:01] >> Their ideas come out of the woodwork. "It encourages them to kind of come up with a business plan." Every year, a Virginia Tech Wood Enterprise Institute class like this one, comes up with an idea and builds on it. "They actually see, hey we're going to sell 80 of these items for a certain amount of money and this is how much it costs for us to do it." Daniel Grizzard, a sustainable biomaterials major, didn't know much about the course before he took it. [00:00:31] "I feel like I'm a lot more prepared for going out into the real world because of the experience I've gained from this class." Students design, produce, and market their wood-based product. "I was tasked with creating a business plan I had to go and research about accounts receivable and how to create the spreadsheets and the balance sheets and income statements and all those things." They'll learn whether their design will take off. [00:00:52] "It's exciting to share or to be able to see the product like that." This year's project: A dog bowl stand and holder. "Just to work on and be able to kind of create a standard thing every single time and have a package to put it in, it feels really good to know that we created all of that." The product and the packaging -- all designed and created by students -- and now available for purchase.

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