TEACHING​ENTREPRENEURSHIP​.org 
Experiences teach skills 
 

“Making It Real” 
 
Length:​ ~75 Minutes 
 
Author: ​Doan Winkel & John Bashkin 
From:​ h
​ ttp://www.teachingentrepreneurship.org/making-it-real/  
 
Dr. Doan Winkel 
John J. Kahl, Sr. Chair in Entrepreneurship 
Director, The Edward M. Muldoon Center for Entrepreneurship 
John Carroll University 
 
Coloring outside the lines. Immensely inquisitive. Deconstructing the box rather than fitting in it. Doan was hard-wired to figure out 
what makes things tick and why. Always pushing boundaries and struggling to fit in the traditional educational system, some would 
have said he was a difficult child. Luckily, his educator parents gave him freedom to explore. By high school, Doan was not only an 
entrepreneur, he was also teaching his friends the entrepreneurial mindset. Despite his frustration with standard education, Doan 
continued to pursue knowledge, and received his BS and MBA from Colorado State University, and his Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship and 
Organizational Behavior from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.   
 
Doan has shared his process of teaching with college and corporate audiences across North America and Europe, and on the​ ​TEDx 
stage. He has won awards for his research into gender and entrepreneurship, and was the first male recipient of the McLean County 
(IL)​ A
​ THENA Leadership Award​, which is “presented to a woman, or man, who is honored for attaining professional excellence, 
community service and for actively assisting women in their achievement of professional excellence and leadership skills.”   
 
Doan is committed to supplementing the educational experiences of young people. He is the founder and director of the 
  Entrepreneurship Education Project, which gathers data from nearly 20,000 college students from 400+ universities across 70+ 
countries to better understand how to teach entrepreneurship. He founded the​ M ​ cLean County Unit 5's Innovative Entrepreneurs 
experiential high school class to offer students the chance to experience what entrepreneurship looks and feels like.  
 
Doan co-founded​ ​internrocket.com​ to help young people discover and pursue their passion as a career path, and ​Legacy Out Loud 
and T ​ he BuildHers​ to ignite young women’s entrepreneurial potential. While serving on the Board of Directors of the​ U
​ nited States 
Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship​, Doan builds programming to give entrepreneurship educators tools to turn their 
classrooms into experiences. More recently, Doan founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of the​ ​Experiential Entrepreneurship 
Exercises Journal​, which enables more active entrepreneurship classrooms through sharing, learning, and doing. At John Carroll 
University, Doan is developing the next frontier in university-based entrepreneurship curriculum and programming. 

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Experiences teach skills 
 

Introduction 
This exercise provides your students with an entrepreneurial experience by placing them in a situation that reflects many of the pressures,
constraints, and reward incentives of new business creation in a compressed 30 minute time frame. It is best used as the very first experience on
the very first day in a course on entrepreneurship. This exercise will set the tone of an experiential course environment and will quickly alert
students who may not be comfortable with such a course; ​some students may feel overwhelmed or anxious​. As an introductory exercise, this is
typically not graded.

This exercise gives students an opportunity to exercise creativity, resourcefulness and teamwork to create and execute on a business opportunity 
within 30 minutes. It exposes students to the concepts of identifying market opportunities, managing limited resources, customer interviewing, 
market segmentation, managing failure, and sales. Most importantly, it requires students to act. This is not a theoretical exercise or retrospective 
case study analysis. Students will learn about themselves, how they respond to the pressures imposed by entrepreneurship, what practical skills 
they bring to a team, and whether entrepreneurship may, or may not be, an appropriate career path.   
 
The first part of this exercise is done outside of the classroom, typically in a location with high foot traffic and/or commercial activity such as a mall 
or strip mall or street lined with shops. The ideal location will be close to the campus to minimize travel time back to the classroom. Students 
convene at the offsite location at the start of class, so advance notice and multiple reminders are required so students know where to go. 
Directions, maps, and other logistical information should be provided ahead of time. No other materials (books, backpacks, notebooks, etc.) are 
required and may be a hindrance. In addition, the exercise suggests that the professor provide cash to the students as seed funding for their 
business (10 $1 bills per team). There may be guidelines or regulations for your institution that forbid this and other arrangements should be made. 
 
This exercise is a guide to get students real-life experience with many elements of ideation through execution of a new business. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Experiences teach skills 
 

Before Class 
 
Educator Guide  Timeline   Suggestions 
Find a Location  Scout an offsite location near campus to  ~3 weeks prior   
ensure there will be sufficient foot traffic  to class. 
and local businesses nearby for students to 
interact with. 
 
Give Students  Provide repeated and clear communications  ~3 weeks prior  Multiple emails, increasing in frequency as the class date 
Instructions  to students regarding the time and location  to class up to  approaches. Send out PDF and/or Google maps directions to 
for the first class.  the day of the  the offsite location for the first class. Send a picture of yourself 
first class  at the location. 
meeting. 
 
Get some Cash  Get $50-100 in $1 bills, depending on the  Day before the   
class size. Be sure to have $10 for each  exercise. 
team of 4. Make other arrangements if local 
regulations preclude using your own money. 
 
Remind Students  Put a notice on the classroom door or  Day of the   
where to Meet  whiteboard for those students who did not  exercise. 
know or forgot about the offsite meeting. 
Indicate that students are to wait in the 
classroom and the larger group will be 
returning to the room after ~45 minutes. 
 

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TEACHING​ENTREPRENEURSHIP​.org 
Experiences teach skills 
 

During Class 
 
Educator Guide  Timeline (Min)  Suggestions 
As Students Arrive  Convene class at an offsite location such as  0-3 minutes  This exercise throws students “into the deep end”, forcing them 
a mall or outdoor shopping area, with plenty  to be creative, work collectively, define a business, identify their 
of foot traffic and commercial activity.  customers and immediately interact with them. Teams have to 
  be resourceful, work with limited resources, and perform under 
As students arrive, assign them in order to  tremendous time pressure. 
4-person teams. 
 
Once everyone has arrived, give each team 
$10 in $1 bills. 
 
Give Instructions  Announce that each team has 30 minutes to  3-5   Examples include: 
make as much money as possible, legally.   Buying bottled water or candy and re-selling it to students. 
  Performing manual labor for a local business. 
The team making the most profit wins and 
gets all of the money from other teams. 
 
Make Money!  After instructions, have the teams disburse.  5-35   Don’t provide specific guidance or instructions. Leave the 
  assignment completely unstructured. Vague hints may be 
After 30 minutes, have teams re-convene in  given, such as pointing out nearby stores, people involved in 
the classroom to debrief.  various activities, the weather, ​i.e​., whatever might prompt 
some creativity for identifying possible needs of consumers. 
 
Return to  Head back to your classroom  35-45    
Classroom 

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Experiences teach skills 
 

Determine the  Back in the classroom:   45-50   

Winner   
Collect all the money as students return to 
the classroom. 
 
Determine the winning team and award 
them the original seed funds and any profits. 
Discussion and  Group reflection via dialogue  50-75  Facilitate a group dialogue. Begin with the winning team. 
Reflection  1. How did they win? 
a. Arrive at decisions? 
b. Negotiate? 
c. Pivot? 
d. Work individually or as a team? 
2. How was that experience? 
a. Scary? 
b. Fun? 
c. Too ambiguous? 
d. How did students respond as individuals? 
3. What did you learn? 
4. What were the business ideas? 
5. How did each team operate, make decisions? 
a. Split up? 
b. Work as a group? 
c. Use the seed capital? 
d. Proactively identify ways to provide value to your 
team? 
6. What was it like using someone else’s money as seed 
capital? 
7. How did you identify and reach your customers? 
a. Observe surroundings? 
b. Identify a need? 
8. Did you have to iterate your approach? 
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Experiences teach skills 
 

9. How did teams decide to go for a B2B or B2C effort? 

 
  

Key Takeaway for Educators 

Through  this  exercise,  students  should  experience  first-hand  many  elements  of  entrepreneurship.  Student  reactions will vary wildly; some may feel 
overwhelmed  or  anxious.  Hopefully  many  will  feel  excited  and motivated by the learning experience and competition. This will provide the following 
benefits: 
● Introduce students to many of the practical aspects of entrepreneurship through experiential learning. 
● Build familiarity and bonding amongst students. 
● Weed out students quickly who are not comfortable with this teaching style. 
● Provide a common reference experience for expanding on topics later in the course. 
 
By  having  students  go  through  this  exercise  early  in the course schedule, they can draw on their experiences when developing ideas throughput the 
term.  
  
 

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