The Student Advantage

Business plan competitions become fertile ground for inventions in need of commercialization.

By Steve Reno | September 2010 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

clipart

GreenStone International, a company developing an
affordable, environmentally friendly product for paving roads, started as one
biochemist’s idea. It wasn’t until 10 years after the product’s invention that
two businesspeople took it to Seattle University’s business plan
competition—where it won the $10,000 grand prize—that the concept finally
captured the attention of investors.

Indeed, student business competitions have become serious
business.

Steve Brilling, executive director of the Entrepreneurship
Center at Seattle University, likes to compare the Harriet Stephenson Business
Plan Competition to a wind tunnel, where students test their ideas to find out
whether or not they’ll fly. But business plan competitions have become more
than just an insulated testing ground. They have evolved into a hotbed of
activity where students, alumni, entrepreneurs and investors interact, and then
build companies that take off.

Competitions are not only learning experiences for students,
but also for non-student entrepreneurs. At the Seattle University and UW
competitions, anyone can enter as long as there is at least one student on the
team.

About half of the ideas in the Seattle University
competition come from non-students, Brilling says. Last year’s second-place
winners were the developers of Clean Coat, a multilayered hospital coat
designed to help prevent the spread of infections in hospitals. The product was
developed by two medical professionals who had an idea, but didn’t know how to
bring it to market.

“They weren’t businesspeople. They were doctors,” Brilling
says. But when they saw their invention integrated into a viable model, “they
were totally jazzed.”

To Brilling, the competition is less about starting new
businesses and more about learning to pitch new ideas, either to investors or
to an existing company. “Entrepreneurship is a spirit,” he says, not simply an
idea for a new business.

At the competition at the UW’s Foster School of Business,
however, the focus is on learning to launch a startup. The winners of the 2008
and 2009 competitions were student-started companies centered on technologies
created at UW.

Wherever the idea comes from, the focus at
both competitions is making ideas into viable companies. Brilling says teams
often start forming as soon as the school year begins, and aspiring
entrepreneurs should act fast.