For Immediate Release:
April 24, 2007
| Contacts: | Jim Aisner, jaisner@hbs.edu, (617) 495-6157 |
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HBS HOLDS 11TH ANNUAL BUSINESS PLAN CONTEST
From healthcare to handbags, $50,000 contest recognizes wide range of opportunities
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| 2007 HBS Business Plan Contest booklets Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva |
BOSTON - Harvard Business School held the culmination of its 11th annual Business Plan Contest yesterday in the School’s Burden Auditorium, the finale of a process that began last January with a total of 62 student teams. Eight made it through the various stages of judging to Monday’s final round of presentations – four teams in the traditional track and four in the social enterprise track, reserved for ventures with a primarily social agenda.
By the end of the day, the judges, representing an array of prominent venture capital, law, and accounting firms, had made their decisions. Second-year Harvard MBA candidate Sandra Nudelman and her sister, Michele, a student at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, won first place in the traditional track with their business plan for a product called Judicial Intelligence, a suite of computer-based tools that will help litigators strategically analyze the opinions of judges they will face in court. HBS assistant professor Mukti Khaire served as the team’s faculty advisor.
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| Professor Bill Sahlman and Dean Jay Light in attendance Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva |
Each first-place team received $10,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind legal and accounting services. As winners of the traditional track, the Judicial Intelligence team also walked away with the Dubilier Prize, which honors the late Martin Dubilier (MBA ’52), cofounder of Clayton, Dubilier, and Rice, one of the premier leveraged buyout firms in the United States. The Peter M. Sacerdote Prize went to the Unite for Health! team. Established by Peter Sacerdote (MBA ’64) in honor of his 40th Reunion at Harvard Business School, the prize fund is meant to encourage HBS students to apply their skills to develop and launch social-purpose ventures.
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| Sandra Nudelman (HBS '07) Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva |
In the traditional track:
- C3 BioEnergy (Tracy Mathews, HBS; Curt Fischer, MIT; Andrew Peterson, MIT) will produce bio-propane for the $21 billion US propane market, offering the only economically competitive, domestically produced, renewable source of this clean-burning fuel.
- Clear Suppliers (Alex Zhang, HBS; Paul Morgenthaler, HBS), already in operation in Germany and China, is a global supply chain “infomediary” for manufacturers.
- Katherine Kwei (Elenor Mak, HBS; Ying Soong, HBS). With their business plan, this team is helping a young luxury handbag company grow to make its mark in a $16 billion market.
In the social enterprise track:
- Charitable Donations Group (Matt Scherrer, HBS; Paris Wallace, HBS). intends to raise millions of dollars for nonprofits in Boston and other locations by helping them accept and liquidate real estate transactions. HBS Senior Lecturer Stacey Childress was their faculty advisor.
“This contest is especially near and dear to my heart,” said HBS Dean Jay Light. “It reflects the intense interest of our alumni in new ventures. Ten to fifteen years after graduation, about half of our alumni describe themselves as entrepreneurs. But the statistics for Business Contest participants go beyond that. Two-thirds of them start their own business only five to seven years after they graduate, and half of that group are working on an idea they first formulated for our Business Plan Contest. Year after year, I am amazed and inspired by the quality of the work I see at this event.”
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| Unite for Heatlh! (L-R): Lingling Zhang, Senior Lecturer Michael Chu, Anna Chodos and Dr. Onil Bhattachaeyya Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva |
Organized by the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative, and HBS students in the Entrepreneurship Club and Social Enterprise Club, the Business Plan Contest provides an integrative learning experience for participants, drawing on all facets of the Harvard MBA curriculum. It is one of several special programs funded by the Rock Center, which was created through the generosity of pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock (MBA ’51).
In 2003, Rock donated $25 million to Harvard Business School to support the entrepreneurship faculty and their research, fellowships for MBA and doctoral students, symposia and conferences, and new outreach efforts to extend the impact of the School's extensive work in this field. To further contribute to its research and course development efforts, Harvard Business School also established the California Research Center in Silicon Valley in 1997.
Harvard Business School offered the country's first business school course in entrepreneurship in 1947. Today, members of the HBS Entrepreneurial Management Unit teach a required course to some 900 students in the first year of the MBA program as well as a broad selection of electives to second-year students. The United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship has recognized the Harvard Business School entrepreneurship program as the best in the country.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 200 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. For almost a century, HBS faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching to educate leaders who have shaped the practice of business around the globe.