A qualitative analysis of the ‘experiential learning’ of business school students and graduates through their participation in The University of Manchester’s annual business start-up competition

Business model tools are viewed with importance by entrepreneurs and also by the academic community that offer entrepreneurship education. Business schools teach business model tools with great importance, so that the students can understand their usefulness and also apply these to their ideas. Students pursuing courses on entrepreneurship and related business programs are taught about these tools by presenting to them case studies where these tools are applied, etc. However, it is of question as to how much importance do the students give to these tools when they are being taught in their courses, and also, whether they get a chance to experience the usage of these business model tools. Business start-up competitions play an important role in giving students an opportunity to apply the business model tools to their own ideas, explore their (business model tools’) usefulness and also gain an experiential understanding of using these. It is important to analyse as to whether these business school students are able to learn through the experience of using these tools for their business ideas in the competition. In this paper, it is examined, as to whether business start-up competitions provide experience to the business school students of using the business model tools and whether through these competitions, students of the University of Manchester feel more confident of knowing how to use these tools for entrepreneurship. The particular business idea competition that is a focus of this paper is the Venture Further competition of 2017.