Pacific Business News - Dec 13, 2007
Stacy Thourot originally planned to open a child-care business at Ala Moana Center. Instead, she is wrapping up her first year running a company that installs replacement glass in cars and trucks. "That's the idea behind entrepreneurship," Thourot said. "You need to be flexible, seek out opportunities and be well-rounded to adapt to different opportunities that present themselves." She said she scrapped the child-care plan because of the sky-high rent charged by the mall and chose instead to run a home-based business. After working in guest services at a Waikiki hotel for several years and as a waitress, Thourot, a single mother of two, said she knew she wanted to own her own business and decided to go back to school.

Having minored in entrepreneurial studies while attaining her MBA at Hawaii Pacific University, Thourot is part of a growing group of entrepreneurs creating demand for programs that don't just teach theory but outline the specific steps for launching a business. Interest in entrepreneurship also is reflected in the surge of new businesses formed in Hawaii in recent years. Some 12,600 new companies were formed in the fiscal year that ended June 30, a 16 percent increase over the 10,842 companies registered in 2004, according to the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. "Seeing Hawaii's huge number of small businesses, where do they go to get help?" asked Chuck Steilen, dean of HPU's College of Business Administration, who introduced the idea of an entrepreneurship center for the school this year.

"There's a tremendous need and demand for the kind of center we're creating from the business community and students." HPU's new center adds to two others already in place, at Chaminade University of Honolulu and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, to encourage and mentor students who want to get their hands dirty running their own businesses. Currently, only HPU offers a degree in entrepreneurial studies, but UH Manoa is working to create a similar undergraduate program.

"The entrepreneurship program definitely helped me get to where I am today," said Thourot, who owns Mobile Autoglass Inc., based in Kaaawa. "While other majors cover case studies, we were challenged to work through a lot of real world issues that real companies would share. Besides the accounting and marketing basics, I learned to be decisive, analytical, how to use current resources to leverage my business."

Despite having no experience with automobile glass replacement, Thourot said she saw potential in the industry after doing research and seeing that demand for the service was high. With the state's tight labor market, she also looked for a business with ample experienced workers and found there were many with the skills her company needed. She started the company in January as a mobile business and she dispatches her five workers from her home near Kualoa Ranch. Thourot said she crafted a business plan for her company as the final project for her master's degree program.

"I still refer to that plan often to help me focus on the overall picture when I get caught up in the day-to-day stuff," she said, noting the benefit of having entrepreneurs for professors to help her revise her business plan a number of times. New center at Hawaii Pacific University HPU launched its entrepreneurship center in October to complement its current entrepreneurial degree program. The degree's course work is similar to that required for an MBA: accounting, management, economics, business law and policy, finance and human resources management.
In addition, students take classes on such topics as small-business management, contemporary entrepreneurship, franchising and international business management. Steilen, HPU's business college dean, helped bring on board the center's executive director, Bee Leng Chua, who started a similar center from scratch at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The center is run out of Chua's office and offers students entrepreneurship-related reference materials. She plans to host such events as round tables, trade shows and seminars. "Our goal is to send students out of HPU with an entrepreneurial mind-set, which is the ability to recognize opportunities for business ventures, to gather and integrate resources, to be able to start a venture if they want, or to become 'intrapreneurs' inside of a large corporation," Chua said. While the center still is new, Chua has ambitious plans. She wants to start up a business plan competition, internship programs and eventually an on-campus incubator program to offer students assistance with startup companies.

nkalani@bizjournals.com