The Prince Entreprenurship Program is committed to experiential learning. According to Dr. Bill Andrews, the program’s director, “One is not an entrepreneur until he or she puts down some money and makes commitments to buyers and sellers. Prior to that, one is still a student of entrepreneurship”. To bridge that gap, Dr. Andrews recently introduced an EBAY component to his Entreprenurial Management course.

Each team was given $500 with which they needed to clear $100 of profit on at least 12 EBAY transactions over a 2 month period. The better teams had clearly defined responsibilities and communicated regularly among their members. Detailed financial records were required on each transaction. Four of the five teams made money, two achieved their profit goals, and over all, the teams returned a profit to the endowment, after first dividing half the profits among the team members.

In general, the students experienced many of the realities of entrepreneurs:

• initial frustration with the inability to sell products.
• fear that marketing / advertising money was not creating sales.
• Aggravation getting the various accounts set up.
• Fear that their chosen product niche or strategy was not workable.
• Apprehension about the re-salability of items purchased.

“From a pedagogical perspective, the exercise was very successful”, said Andrews. “The students were forced to assess the knowledge base and contacts of their team, determine where they might have a competitive advantage, delegate responsibilities, make buying decisions, provide outstanding customer service and ensure accurate accounting”.

Some of the outcomes read like the “what to expect” list in an introductory entrepreneurship text:

• Making money was harder than expected.
• The better teams were the best organized.
• The better teams had a distinctive strategy by which they planned on making money. Teams that had an opportunistic “buy low- sell high” strategy tended to do poorly.
• The better teams put a lot more time into their business than the poorer performers.
• Two of the top three teams had a strong leader who ensured proper organization and dedication.

“We hope to do the EBAY game in the Spring when we offer the course next. The students really seemed to engage with it”, said Andrews. They also provided some interesting ideas for improving it, so it should be even better.”