IHS Business Students Win State Title

Published January 15, 2009

Students from Independence High School will represent the State of Tennessee at the National Business Planning Competition in March. The students are part of an upper level business course called Virtual Enterprise, and placed first among 22 teams at the annual state competition earlier this month.

Virtual Enterprise requires students to run a virtual business in which they sell sports apparel and

accessories online. On a daily basis, students from states like New York, Virginia and South Carolina will order items from their business, requiring the Independence students to process the orders, send invoices and balance books to reflect the money received from the orders.

"Students are employees within the firm," says Virtual Enterprise Instructor Lindsey Meador. "They learn higher level concepts that are usually not covered in other business and marketing courses."

For the state competition, a group of four students gave a 12 minute formal presentation of their business plan, which included everything from objectives to a financial outlook. The students will now take that plan with them to New York when they compete with teams from across the country at the National Business Planning Competition March 25-26.