Partnership creates MBA entrepreneurs

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland electronic marketplace provider Southfresh has entered a joint venture with Waikato University's Management School to develop e-commerce trading hubs.

Fifteen Master of Business Administration students at the school's Auckland campus in Penrose are already working on creating the first such marketplace and will be established as a standalone company.

Southfresh chairman Neville Jordan said Southfresh, which was contributing "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in capital to the project as well as mentoring and board representation, would own 70 per cent of each company.

The remaining shares would be shared between students and the university.

"The students will do everything from putting together the company constitution, raising finance, forecasting, doing marketing and sales plans and doing the market research to decide what e-commerce hub they set up," Mr Jordan said.

"It's the sort of thing students will normally be learning in an MBA to apply when they leave. We've set it up as a live company embedded in the university."

The companies will be reviewed after 18 months, at which stage a decision will be made whether to refinance them or sell them.

The marketplace software was developed by Southfresh to run a marketplace for fresh fish.

Southfresh has also developed marketplaces for cut flowers and plant nurseries.

The software is now hosted by Unisys ASP services, which has an agreement to sell it internationally.

Management School executive director Dr Shirley Leitch said it was a proven product.

"We are not testing this. We are a channel," Dr Leitch said.

The programme will set the school apart from other MBA courses.

"Traditional MBA programmes produce people for corporate jobs, but the future of New Zealand depends on people who are more entrepreneurial and wealth-creating," she said.

"These students are not just doing projects in a classroom. This is a real company creating marketplaces with buyers and sellers. They will be e-commerce entrepreneurs."

Dr Leitch said MBA students were typically aged between 28 and 48 and have at least five years' management experience. They maintained their existing jobs.

"What we expect to see from this is a lot of e-commerce learning being fed back into New Zealand companies."

Mr Jordan said the Waikato MBA course was chosen for the project because of its reputation in the business community.

"Waikato is small enough to care about such a programme yet large enough to implement it successfully."