Students vie for technology enterprise awards

Awards totaling $24,500 and possible future business success await winners of a technology-based business plan competition Wednesday, April 26, on campus.

Eight student teams — who have put in months or years of independent work on their entries — will present original plans to a panel of experts as they compete for awards ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.

Organized by the UW Technology Enterprise Cooperative, the competition encourages student collaboration on technology-based start-up ventures. Each team includes students with science or engineering qualifications as well as students with business expertise. Awards are given for business plans with the greatest commercial promise. Winners from previous competitions have patented or licensed their ideas, and several have incorporated them into moneymaking business ventures.

“These plans are not dress rehearsals or classroom exercises, they are the real thing with real consequences,” says business professor Anne Miner, UW-TEC co-director. “Students get intense hands-on experience with cross-functional teams–competitive strategy, finance, product development, operations planning, and organizational governance in building their plans.”

G. Steven Burrill, a 1966 business school alumnus and chief executive officer of Burrill & Company, San Francisco, has given the university a gift to fund the competition. The first-place team receives $10,000, second prize is $7,000, third is $4,000 and fourth place, $1,000.

The Tong Family Foundation funding the $2,500 Tong Prototype Prize for the competition’s best prototype. Peter and Janet Tong are UW alumni.

The public can attend competition events in 3070 Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave. Team presentations of 20 minutes each last from 8:15 to 11:20 a.m.; the keynote address by Promega CEO Bill Linton, “Biotech 2010: Creativity and Commerce,” is scheduled at 2 p.m. and awards are scheduled at 3 p.m. Displays illustrating the team’s business concepts will be on view in the Grainger Hall Atrium from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Judging the event are representatives of prominent Madison technology-based businesses, Les Lescrenier, CEO, Gammex RMI; Nathan Harper, CIO, GUILD.com Inc.; Scott Button. WI Venture Investors; and Monty Schmidt, Sonic Foundry Inc.