Students with hopes of creating fast food chains and wireless services have turned to Penn's very own Wharton Business Plan Competition for help. The WBPC, which runs every academic year, began in 1998 and is currently headed by Emily Cieri, managing director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs. "The competition is a wonderful opportunity for students to exercise their entrepreneurial instincts," Cieri said. By creating groups of approximately four to six students, the teams follow three progressive stages in hopes of finally producing a full-fledged business plan. Cieri also said that the competition encourages cross-school collaboration, from Wharton to the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to create a "mix of expertise." This year, 20 percent of submissions involved services such as restaurants, travel plans and communication methods. Junior Ari Meisel is the team leader of Uncle Lui's Chinese Food, which is creating a plan for a national Chinese fast food chain that would sell a popular Chinese treat comparable to a crepe. "By submitting a plan to the competition," Meisel explained in an e-mail, "I'm challenging myself in a thought exercise and seeing if I can hone my skills working with ideas I usually don't consider." Meisel, however, is not the only one racking his brain -- Wharton graduate student Abiodun Adisa is also working with her teammates to create an innovative "cutting-edge product that has the potential to change the corporate travel industry." Adisa's team is working on a "travel analyzer," which according to an e-mail from Adisa is a "company that develops corporate travel business intelligence solutions that enable companies to reduce operating costs and air travel costs while improving operating efficiency." Communications has also become a focus of the WBPC. Jeffery To, a first-year graduate student in technology management, has joined forces with two co-workers to develop a wireless solutions business. "We are trying to deliver services wirelessly to end consumers and enterprises using their existing IT infrastructure and their wireless devices," To wrote in an e-mail, adding that he hopes that the plan will address customers' need for "immediate, convenient, real-time data and services." These plans, however, have come a long way so far -- the first stage, which took place last November, involved the submission of a 1,200-word business concept summary. This part of the process is noncompetitive, and "everyone gets feedback," Cieri said. After this step, students had the opportunity to be paired with mentors through one-on-one coaching or seminars to help teams through the second and third stages of the competition. The second phase of the competition, which started on Jan. 29, is where the real "competitive aspect starts," according to Cieri. In this stage, teams submit a 2,000-word business overview in which they further detail their business ideas, as well as explain how they will impact the market and whether they will be viable. Only 25 teams will be chosen on Feb. 25 to continue onto the third round, in which they submit full business plans -- these will be shown by the eight top teams at a full-day venture fair on April 28. The top three teams will receive a total of $35,000 in cash prizes. While the money may be an incentive for some contestants, Cieri said that it is the "educational process throughout the competition" that is most important. Although the WBPC is already in its second stage, the competition is always looking for students to enter in future years. "If you got an idea," Cieri said, you should "definitely put it out there."
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