Raising awareness of entrepreneurship and e-commerce: a case study on student-entrepreneurship

In this article, we describe a competition to write a business plan for an e-commerce application for an organisation. The competition was open for students at all levels of education, although only students and alumni of the university participated. Five organisations were recruited for participation in the competition called e-Match. For each organisation, a team was formed consisting of three to five students and one or more representatives of senior management. A third party coached the teams via three workshops (on idea generation, idea selection and idea elaboration). Each team prepared a business plan and entered it for the competition. The business plan had to be prepared within two months. The best plan was rewarded with a prize. For the participating students, the competition was an excellent opportunity to put their knowledge and skills to work and to win a prize with it. For the companies, it was an opportunity to explore the area of e-commerce and develop an edge over the competition. There is also an opportunity for the region, since the competition promoted innovation through e-commerce. For the university, a competition like this one is an opportunity to raise awareness of entrepreneurship among students.