EnviroZyme founder John O'Donnel (left), former seminar member and present employee Rob Phillips (center), and principal Rick Barrows with a cutthroat trout fed their grain-based fish food. Hands-on Fish Food Roadmapping by Scott Freutel Lofty Montana Hall notwithstanding, MSU has never been an ivory-tower institution. From its founding as a land-grant college in 1893 to its present incarnation as top-flight research university, MSU's programs have always provided researched-based, practical information and assistance to Montana's citizens--agriculturalists, producers, families, business people. An innovative new College of Business program builds on MSU's heritage of putting knowledge to practical use. The College's Center for Entrepreneurship for the New West and its minor in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management teach students about the challenges of creating start-up ventures while offering assistance to local ventures. The minor's capstone course, "Management 463: The Entrepreneurial Experience," is a three-credit senior seminar taught by visiting assistant professor Laura Black. It's open to seniors from any major, and it's a class like no other. The seminar is designed to give students real-world entrepreneurial experiences in high-tech start-up companies. In turn, the start-ups, most of them in or near Bozeman, benefit from the students' research and planning, suggestions and recommendations. One of the companies students are working with is EnviroZyme, which is located in TechRanch, the MSU-affiliated business incubator just west of campus. The firm was founded in 2002 by John O'Donnell, who is also executive director of TechRanch. Of TechRanch, O'Donnell says, "We are big on innovation. We are big on return on the investment. There's something like $80 million a year spent at MSU. We are trying to find some of the better research discoveries and see if we can't commercialize [them] locally [and] create more high-paying, intellectually stimulating, clean-technology jobs--reduce the brain drain and increase the tax base." What TechRanch and EnviroZyme are up to, he says, "is a very innovative way of doing all that." Working at EnviroZyme with O'Donnell are Tim McDermott of the MSU Thermal Biology Institute, Rick Barrows of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Fish Service and entrepreneur Cliff Bradley. EnviroZyme's first commercial product, as yet unnamed, is a plant-derived food for farmed trout and salmon. It's meant to be a superior, less costly alternative to the fish meal presently fed. Microbes McDermott discovered in Yellowstone National Park break down certain plant substances in a way that makes them suitable for fish. If the new food is successful, EnviroZyme may be creating a new market for growers of barley, canola and safflower while improving the consistency and quality of farmed fish. Last year senior Rob Phillips, '02 ME, added to his engineering emphasis a minor in entrepreneurship. He teamed up with marketing student Cory Wildin, '03 Bus, and the two were assigned to work with EnviroZyme. "EnviroZyne needed basic market research," Phillips said recently. "They knew markets were out there, knew they must exist, but didn't know how big they were." Phillips and Wildin focused their research on the market for food for farm-raised rainbow trout, a growing business in the Northwest. Once a week the two met with O'Donnell and lead researcher Cliff Bradley to report their progress and decide what to focus on next. At the end of the semester they formally presented their findings to EnviroZyme's principals, who in turn evaluated the students' work in consultation with Black. Phillips said he learned just how difficult it is to actually a start a business. "In theory and writing it's simple but when you actually do it, you realize that it's really hard, that there's a lot to learn," he said. "The seminar gave us the opportunity to act as though we were consultants, not just students, and to develop something of a road map for the company's future. We got to develop something we liked working on, liked doing--it was exciting." EnviroZyme's O'Donnell was impressed by Phillips' and Wildins' work. Of Phillips he said, "Rob really exceeded our expectations of what a student could bring to the project," he said. "He's very professional, very thorough, and has been a great addition to the company." O'Donnell has hired Phillips part-time and put him to work exploring grant possibilities. And he is working with two new seminar students for the current academic year. According to Black, one of her seminar's goals is to help students learn and practice professional behaviors, just as Phillips and Wildins did. "One of the things the experience does is to instill in students respect for people whose expertise differs from theirs," she said recently. "They also gain business acumen and a repertoire of methods and processes that allows them to help entrepreneurs identify goals and milestones."