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.