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Tapping student talent
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October 6, 1999: 1:08 p.m. ET
Want creative ideas but can't afford a consultant? Call nearest MBA program
By The Applegate Group
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NEW YORK - Entrepreneurs have a tough time setting their egos aside to ask for help, especially when the helpers are graduate students. But thousands of savvy business owners around the country are relying on student brainpower to overcome serious financial and marketing challenges.
"We went through two very rough winters, which really sucked a lot of the life out of us," said Ben Rischall, president of United Outdoor Stores in Fridley, Minn.
Four years of sluggish sales in the late 1980s and intense competition by mega-stores moving into the Minneapolis area forced Rischall to lay off about a third of his work force and close six of his 15 stores a few years ago.
In October 1998, he called the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and asked for a team of graduate students to help him figure out how to reconnect with customers.
Get a fresh perspective
Since 1961, thousands of second-year graduate students in the business school have helped about 1,500 big and small businesses see their companies through fresh eyes.
Clipboards in hand, Rischall's five-person marketing team conducted brief in-store surveys, offering customers discount coupons if they answered the questions.
"We assumed our customer was strongly male and blue collar," said Rischall, a sales executive who joined the family business in the late 1970s to help his father, Maurice, run the company. "We were surprised to find out our customers were more female and white-collar than we thought."
The marketing survey, which would have cost $30,000 or more if it were conducted by a professional marketing firm, cost Rischall about $3,000. Based on the students' detailed findings, Rischall hired a new advertising agency, which "hit the ground running."
"We changed our advertising philosophy, came up with a fresh logo, and started advertising on radio and television," said Rischall, who is hoping for strong fourth-quarter sales.
Although the company, which has about $12 million in annual revenues, is not "out of the woods yet," Rischall said, "the balance sheet is going in the right direction. We are in much better shape this year than we were last year," he said. "We had to make these changes, or we wouldn't be around."
Field study work useful to MBAs
You don't have to live in Minnesota to tap into student talent. Most major business schools make their graduate students available for field-study projects.
UCLA, the University of Southern California, New York University and Harvard are among the schools that encourage, and usually require, students to get real-world experience.
"The top business schools tend to be very theoretical," said Carlson School Dean David Kidwell, who considers Carlson's MBA program among the best in the nation. "We want our students to go beyond case studies to make linkages to the real world."
He said students with solid field experience are also more attractive to future employers, who prefer to hire seasoned MBAs.
Many Carlson MBA students have returned to school after working for a few years, so they aren't totally green when it comes to solving complex business problems.
"We think (field study) gives us a competitive advantage," Kidwell said. "Plus, in Minnesota, there is a very high degree of social responsibility, where top executives are serving as mentors to our students."
Students bring creativity …
Carlson graduate students never know what kind of research they will be asked to conduct. Four students with no knowledge of poultry were assigned recently to explore the commercial viability of a new multiple-disease chicken vaccine.
"The school assigned four young women who had never been on a farm to work on this avian marketing project," said Thomas Brunelle, Ph.D., president and CEO of the SOTA Tec Fund in St. Paul.
SOTA Tec, sponsored by the Blandin Foundation, is charged with helping Minnesota farmers and rural entrepreneurs be more financially successful.
"The students did a marvelous study," said Brunelle, who spent about $5,000 for the research conducted with help from the Carlson School's patent and technology marketing office.
The grad students looked at whether a patented poultry-injection machine could be used cost effectively to inoculate birds three days before they hatched. About 80 percent of U.S. and Canadian hatcheries use "ovo vaccination" to protect their flocks against disease, according to the student study released in March.
Because the injection equipment is expensive, the students looked into the feasibility of injecting three vaccines at once. Their research report is now being used for a more detailed commercialization study, Brunelle said.
… and shorten development time
At Carlson's Entrepreneurship Center, students and professors work together on projects for businesses.
"We assist small businesses in a variety of ways," said Doug Johnson, co-director of the center.
Bill Laughlin, a retired businessman, recently turned to Johnson for help in figuring out whether his patented key-making machine had commercial potential. Laughlin's frustrating attempt to replicate a key for a very old lock led to his brainstorm a few years ago.
"I thought there had to be an easier way to make keys," said Laughlin.
His company, Machine Magic LLC, based in Minnetonka, has a patented prototype, but he said it needs more work if it is to become commercially viable.
"The machine works, we have a patent, and several more patents pending," said Laughlin. "It gives people the ability to replicate keys without blanks."
He's hoping a team of three Carlson engineering students, three MBAs and two instructors will help him determine whether to pursue the commercialization of his invention. He'll pay about $10,000 for the team's help.
"A pretty high-powered team will work on this for nine months," Laughlin said. "My hope is that the university will shorten the development time span to prove my idea a success or failure."
For information on the Carlson School's field study program, call 1-612-624-0006. 
(The Applegate Group is run by Jane Applegate, a syndicated columnist and author of 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business. "Succeeding in Small Business" appears Wednesdays on CNNfn.com.)
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