Wharton is offering a one-way ticket to the real world of business.
And eight students from the Wharton and Engineering schools -- from both the undergraduate schools and Wharton's MBA program -- are closer than ever to earning it.
The Wharton Business Plan Competition -- in which Penn students create a business plan to be reviewed by a panel of judges -- announced last Monday the eight finalists who will compete for the grand prize of $20,000.
The finalists are judged on their executive plan, which should be full of "detail and meat," according to Megan Mitchell, associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs.
And then there's the added bonus of being told that you're pretty much a shoo-in for real-world success.
"If all the venture capitalists say that [our business plan] is great, it's hard not to take that and pursue it," said first-year MBA student David Kreiger.
One of the competition's "great eight," Kreiger is working on changing the model for call centers, which customers can call and voice questions and concerns. Call centers are currently located all over the world.
Instead of setting up company offices across the globe, Kreiger hopes to create a system under which company representatives can work out of their homes.
Though Kreiger was inspired by JetBlue -- an online travel agency that does this already -- he says that a currently untapped demographic is military housewives, who have a hard time maintaining the same job when their husbands are constantly being moved all over the world.
Kreiger added that he would not be telling JetBlue of his innovative idea anytime soon.
Other competitors were inspired by personal experiences to enter the competition.
Second-year MBA student Matthew Steege -- whose mother died of cancer last year -- said that when "trying to figure out how to deal with his loss," he was motivated to develop a medical device that could ease treatment for cancer patients.
With the help of cancer researchers, Steege is now busy developing "THERiMAGE," a device as tiny as a bubble that will allow doctors to make sure chemotherapy for cancer patients targets only the region of the body that requires it.
"When somebody has cancer, the chemotherapy is generally injected into the bloodstream so [that] it goes everywhere, [making] people lose their hair," explained Steege, whose "micro-bubble" technology will work to prevent the chemotherapy from spreading to where it's not needed.
But as MBA students work to wow the judges panel-- which spans investors, venture capitalists, Wharton alumni and entrepreneurs -- undergraduates are also working on biomedical innovations.
Finalist and Engineering senior Jonathan Danoff is developing a device called "IntelliStem," which is meant to improve the implantable devices that are used to replace hips.
This original technology extends the lifetime of the implant and speeds up recovery, Danoff said.
While most finalists say they know not to count their chickens before they hatch, they do have a post-competition plan: even more work.
If the $20,000 prize -- funded mainly by sponsors such as Johnson & Johnson -- becomes theirs, competitors say they will invest the money in further research.
