Dateline: Santa Clara, California

Textbook Equity’s business plan, which outlines a sustainable business model for supplying open textbook to community college students, won first place (shared) in the services sector business plan competition. The business plan, the result of six months of the intense entrepreneurial “boot camp” at Santa Clara University’s California Program for Entrepreneurship, highlighted the major changes in the cost structure of publishing industry. Unique ideas in the business plan includes open content, performance rebates to students, and royalties to open content authors. Essential to a sustainable business model are maintaining quality and version control, ease of access, outputs in digital and print formats, and adoptability.