An array of Harding student entrepreneurs have collaborated again for the annual Arkansas Governor\u2019s Cup. The Arkansas Capital Corporation Group created The Governor\u2019s Cup in 2001 as a business competition to encourage college students who \u201cwant to explore entrepreneurial endeavors and new venture creations while still in school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kenneth Olree, director of the Waldron Center, helps form the teams from Harding who enter in the Governor\u2019s Cup, and he said the competition is about how to write a persuasive business plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt works to bring people together from diverse disciplines,\u201d Olree said.<\/p>\n
From the engineering and business majors, to graphic design, exercise science and English majors, Olree said there are good connections between entrepreneurial students across campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen everybody taps into their skillsets, you get a much more robust business plan,\u201d Olree said. \u201cYou get a much more robust method of presenting what it is that you\u2019re wanting to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior Rachel Heussner, a mechanical engineering major, is a member of one of five teams at Harding entering the competition this year. Heussner said every engineer in the senior design class has to build an innovative working product to complete graduation requirements, so business majors specifically like to pair up with senior designers to create a plan around an already-working product.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Governor\u2019s Cup, you don\u2019t have to have a working product,\u201d Heussner said, \u201cbut it looks a lot better if you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Landon Burcham, a biomedical engineering major and participant in the Governor\u2019s Cup competition, said the engineering and business departments compliment each other well. On his team, there are biomedical, electrical and mechanical engineers working with a couple of business students.<\/p>\n
He said working with the business students has made him realize how important business is to helping\u00a0people in his field.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really are limited on how many people you can help\u00a0by how much money you can make,\u201d Burcham said.<\/p>\n
Heussner said if the project does not get to the market,\u00a0then it is just a prototype not helping anyone.<\/p>\n
Sophomore Erin Weiss, one of the business students on Burcham\u2019s team, said she has enjoyed seeing the illumination of the different fascinations of the team members through the different fields of study, and how the coming together of their divergent minds and varying backgrounds has created\u00a0something that could not have been without the diversity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kind of both just understand that there are sides of it\u00a0that we won\u2019t understand of each other\u2019s,\u201d Weiss said.<\/p>\n
Burcham said though the Governor\u2019s Cup competition is a simulation of sorts, it is a real experience in learning how to work with people, how to build a successful business and how\u00a0to persuasively get that business into the real world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is cool because the Governor\u2019s Cup has produced real- life products that go into an actual market and help people,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cSo if ours doesn\u2019t [help people] now, it\u2019s learning\u00a0the process of something that one day will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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