UW-Madison students win Singapore competition

A team of UW–Madison business students has won first place and $20,000 in an international business plan competition in Singapore.

Kelly Bruner, Dominic Foscato and Brad Krutsch comprised the Wisconsin team — one of six teams that made the finals June 13 in the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition held at Singapore Management University. Jay Ebben, a Ph.D. student in management and human resources, accompanied the students as their adviser.

The Wisconsin team won for its presentation on Imago Scientific Instruments, a Madison, Wis., company that is developing technology for the semiconductor and other industries that employ nanotechnology. Imago’s product is a Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP) microscope, originated from research performed by Thomas Kelly and his staff at the materials science department of UW–Madison’s College of Engineering. Master of business administration student Amy Gribb supervises the student team.

The competition is the first international business plan competition organized at the undergraduate level, targeting students from universities, colleges and polytechnics internationally.

The only other U.S. team to make the finals was Purdue. Other schools in the finals were the University of Manitoba, Canada; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia; and a joint effort of the National University of Singapore, Singapore, and the University of Wollongong, Australia.

To enter the competition, teams submitted business plans that included product information, an assessment of the competition and financial projections. After the original submissions, the field was narrowed down from more than 200 to the six finalists.

“We are pleased to see our student teams do so well in international business plan competition,” says R.D. Nair, interim business dean. “This is the latest in a series of strong showings by UW–Madison business student teams. These competitions are becoming an increasingly valuable part of the learning process here. They offer students a rich international experience and help them students acquire skills they will be able to use in the business world.”

In early June, students from the business school took top honors in national case competition sponsored by the Consortium for Graduate Study. Another School of Business team took first place in a venture capital investment competition in Austin, Texas.

Kelly Bruner is from Boscobel, Wis., and is majoring in information systems and management. Dominic Foscato, of Richfield, Wis., is majoring in management and marketing. Brad Krutsch, Washburn, Wis., is in the business school’s five-year accounting program.