Game Plans Students are learning business strategy by playing entrepreneur.

From introducing inventive game elements into the classroom tostarting mock businesses in an all-virtual marketplace, businessschools are hoping to prepare students for business ownership inreally cool ways.

At Towson University near Baltimore, students can participate inThe Associate, a semester-long program similar to NBC's TheApprentice with Donald Trump. Eight students work on differentreal-life cases each week, learn about things like manufacturingand innovation, and present their solutions to a Trump-like localbusiness magnate for review. Only one student remains at the end,winning a job with the magnate's business. "Students havesaid it's been the best educational and networking opportu-nity[they've had]," notes Laleh Malek, program coordinator anddirector of professional experience for the College of Business andEconomics. For more on the program, go to www.towson.edu/cbe/associate.

Incorporating the element of chance is Waverly Deutsch, clinicalassistant professor of entrepreneurship at the University ofChicago Graduate School of Business. A fan of the game Dungeons& Dragons, Deutsch likens starting a business to playingD&D, where the skills and choices of players are tempered withchance. So she created a game called YourCo., in which studentssimulate running a company and present plans for launching thebusiness, running operations, etc. When students pre-sent, Deutschuses a series of calculators she's created to determine theprobability of success. Students then roll a 10-sided die thattells them of some unexpected event (a sale fell through, forexample) and they must develop a plan of action. "The setting[feels] real," she says.

In fact, simulating real-life business situations in a virtualenvironment is a major trend. At Seton Hall University in SouthOrange, New Jersey, assistant professor of entrepreneurship JayAzriel has his students use an online simulation to run a virtuallemonade stand, determining factors like sup-ply costs and productpricing as well as weather contingency plans. Students then takewhat they learn and start real lemonade stands on campus.

Michigan State University professor Michael Lobbestael uses thevirtual business platform MarketplaceBusiness Simulations, which lets students all over the worldcreate virtual companies, make business decisions and compete withother virtual businesses. Lobbestael asks his business students torun a virtual manufacturing operation. They make two years'worth of decisions in their semester-long class, then present theirbusiness plans to actual VCs to see if their ideas have legs."You can literally spend as much time [working on the virtualbusiness] as you would a real business," says Lobbestael.

For another virtual business platform, check out the Institute for VirtualEnterprise at City University of New York in New York City. Inthis platform, students can develop companies and buy and sellproducts with other student teams worldwide-even take the com-panypublic or borrow money from a virtual bank. Says Jonathan Deutsch,an IVE fellow, "It gives students a chance to test theirentrepreneurial concept in a closed economy before doing it forreal."