From Value Creation to Values Creation: The Entrepreneur Enrichment Program as an Enhancement to Business Plan Competitions

Abstract

This paper will discuss a co-curricular program innovation, the Entrepreneur Enrichment Program (EEP), within the Fermanian School of Business at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU). The EEP seeks to provide an enhancement to traditional collegiate business plan competitions. It is believed by the author that many such competitions unwittingly create an illusion of entrepreneurial success through the development of stylistically attractive and technically acceptable business plans at the expense of providing a more well-balanced personal, professional and relational framework of entrepreneurial and start-up success. It is further contended that overly focusing upon business plan creation and competition may not be the ideal way of transmitting entrepreneurial skills and information to aspiring student-entrepreneurs, especially Christian ones. This paper urges that Christian business schools should consider creating more balanced co-curricular entrepreneurial programs by offering a more relational model of engagement between business mentors and student-entrepreneurs from all academic disciplines and departments. This model should work toward the production of high-quality and market-ready business plans for student-entrepreneur ventures in a modified way from the norm. Ultimately, the EEP seeks to expand the value-creation enterprise of business plans to have the additional component of values-creation.