The road to Little Rock goes through Fayetteville today and Friday for collegiate business-plan teams aiming to take home the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup. Semifinalists and finalists are at the Chancellor Hotel — as we speak — making their cases before a panel of judges. Winners will be announced at the big awards banquet shindig April 10 (next Wednesday) at the Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock. Business-plan teams from Arkansas colleges and universities have competed all over the world in prestigious competitions in recent years, and fared well. Teams mentored by Carol Reeves from the University of Arkansas have fared so well that Arkansas has become a prominent player on the business-plan scene. Sort of like the Hogs were in hoops in the early 90s, or on the gridiron circa 2010-11. [Read more…]

Like long-awaited spring, the annual Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup business-plan competition approaches, and student entrepreneurs from across the state are honing their pitches. The DWR Governor’s Cup is the state’s premier business-plan competition, and similar events are held in Oklahoma and Nevada. The three states made up the home territory for the old Donrey media empire. The winners from the Governor’s Cup contests in each state meet in May for the Tri-State Governor’s Cup in Las Vegas. [Read more…]

Silicon Solar Solutions of Fayetteville has developed a method of improving the efficiency of solar cells by 15 percent, and the patent for its technology has been moved from provisional to pending by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Silicon Solar Solutions is a Genesis Technology Incubator client at the University of Arkansas and an Innovate Arkansas client firm. It received a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in December to further advance the technology, developed in partnership with fellow UA graduate business plan team Picasolar. [Read more…]

At the University of Arkansas, students from Dr. Carol Reeves’ New Venture Development class are preparing to conquer the world, or save it, or both. In Haiti, impoverished people are echoing American complaints about modern life using words that hit awfully close to home. This is all related. I spent a day in Fayetteville last week for a story I am writing for a business magazine. It’s about the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup, a competition where college students create and present business plans for cash prizes. [Read more…]

A team from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville took the grand prize at a Canadian business competition for a process to improve solar cell efficiency, the UA announced Thursday. The team, Picasolar, won $20,000 for its first place prize at the IBK Capital-Ivey Business Plan Competition held Jan. 25-26 at the University of Western Ontario. The team was then invited to the Venture Labs Investment Competition at the University of Texas at Austin in May, an event that bills itself as the “Super Bowl of business competitions.” Picasolar’s process was invented by team member Seth Shumate and could improve solar cell efficiency by 15 percent, which could save manufacturers between $5 million and $10 million annually per production line. [Read more…]

8th year of Youth Entrepreneur Showcase Business Plan Statewide Competition for fifth through eighth grade students.