The Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual Business Plan Competition challenges students to move beyond business concepts and test their ideas before entrepreneurs and industry professionals. This year’s five top-ranked teams share how the competition helped shape their next steps.

Carson College of Business students in Chris Cooney’s Entrepreneurial Marketing class spent spring semester tackling a challenge common to entrepreneurs: identify a real problem, develop a solution, and rapidly turn that solution into a viable company with a functional app.

For the second consecutive year, students from CamEd Business School in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, traveled to WSU to present ventures developed through the school’s entrepreneurship program. Student teams shared their business concepts with members of the Carson College’s International Business Club.

Kathy Fujiwara is CEO of EXEC Hawai’i, where she helps organizations strengthen leadership, workforce strategy, and effectiveness. She also founded Pacific Artisan Collective, a nonprofit supporting Hawai’i-based artisans. She credits the Carson College’s Executive MBA program with connecting business strategy with entrepreneurship and community impact.

Helping organizations adapt to change is central to Devin Johnson’s work. Johnson, who earned a Carson College Online MBA offered through WSU Global Campus while he worked full time at Amazon, says the program strengthened his understanding of business beyond his HR background.

Using data from the 2014 and 2018 FIFA World Cups, a study coauthored by Carson College Professor Jeremy Beus found that team initiative alone had no direct relationship with team performance. Instead, teams performed best when members’ initiative was accompanied by strong coordination and communication.