Building a Business for Class NOT in Entrepreneurship

As an entrepreneurship major, building a business is a familiar process to me. So when I found out that in my human communication course Organizational Communication we would be creating a business for our final project, I wasn’t worried. But what I have learned is that building a business where not everyone comes from the same understanding is entirely different.

Building a business in my communications course meant that many of my team members were unfamiliar with everything needed to start a company. One of the goals of the project is to learn how to better communicate as a team, and in that process I became sort of a teacher - sharing what I have learned within the entrepreneurship department with my classmates.

The goals of building the business were also quite different. In entrepreneurship courses, there is a lot of focus on viability of the idea and market research. While these aspects were still important, as there is not a goal of pursuing the idea and rather just writing a paper and making a presentation there is less pressure to make sure the business idea is worthwhile. In general this makes for less appealing businesses.

There is also much more focus on the persuasiveness of the presentation. This was an aspect I was excited about because I love pitches. We learned about various methods to make our presentations more persuasive, such as including a clear call to action. We also learned frameworks in which to organize our presentation to make them more persuasive, such as Monroe's motivated sequence.

More and more, courses outside of formal entrepreneurship departments have students creating their own businesses. From MBA programs, to computer science projects, to communications courses and more, the process of creating a business is multifaceted and applies to various majors. That said, I am happy I was able to study entrepreneurship here at Trinity where there is a focus on startups and how they operate. In doing so I feel more confident in my ability to run a successful venture in the future.


-Kylie Moden

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