On Thursday, the graduate and undergraduate winners of the 2010 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition will be announced at the sixth annual Governor’s Cup awards dinner. The dinner, always a gala event, caps months of work by hundreds of entrepreneurial Oklahoma college students. The teams submitted their written business plans in early March. The plans were evaluated through an independent review process, and the competition was narrowed to 12 undergraduate division semifinalists and seven graduate division finalists. [Read more…]

A UALR team developing a business plan to market a method of determining acetaminophen toxicity will make its oral presentation for two awards in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup business plan competition Thursday and Friday, April 8 and 9. [Read more…]

Arkansas Tech University students will compete against eleven other teams in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Competition on Thursday. During the competition the Arkansas Tech team, which includes Samuel Collier, Zachary Massey, James Roberson and Ryan Treadwell, will present their business plan for a fictitious company before a panel of judges. The company is entitled EM Innovation and is a phone applications company that would send out an alert in the event of severe weather. This marks the 10th year for the competition, and organizers say it is “designed to encourage students of Arkansas’s universities and colleges to act on their ideas and talents in order to produce tomorrow’s businesses.” [Read more…]

Several budding capitalists were recently chosen to participate in the next round of the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Graduate and Undergraduate Business Plan Competition. A total of 12 undergraduate and five graduate teams will advance beyond the 50 groups representing 14 schools that entered the statewide contest. “Our goal has always been to encourage the development and commercialization of ideas and technologies originating in Arkansas universities,” Arkansas Economic Acceleration Foundation executive director Kerri Daniels said in a brief announcement. “Year after year, we see some amazing ideas and a lot of talent right here.” [Read more…]

Ouachita Baptist University’s Hickingbothom School of Business recently held its inaugural Business Plan Competition. Participating students formed teams or worked individually under the supervision of a faculty member to create a start-up company for rewards of up to $4,000. “These students submitted ‘real’ business plans, the same type of plan that one would produce prior to seeking funds from a private investor or banker,” said Bryan McKinney, dean of OBU’s Hickingbothom School of Business. Creating these business plans involved producing a financial profile of a business from scratch, building a market research profile and creating the framework for a startup business and much more. [Read more…]

The Tears of Life business-plan team at the University of Arkansas’ Walton College of Business has been awarded the 2009 John A. White Award for Faculty-Student Collaboration. The partnership between the team and faculty member Carol Reeves won or placed in five business-plan competitions across the country, earning more than $85,000. The students’ company, Tears for Life LLC, is a medical diagnostic equipment company that is licensing technology from the University of Arkansas for Medical Science. The UAMS diagnostic equipment tests for proteins found in tears to detect breast cancer. UAMS BioVentures, an Innovate Arkansas research partner, as well as more than 15 business people, advised the team on its plan. [Read more…]

John Brown University professor, Mandy Moore, discusses the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup competition. What do students go through to put their entrepreneurial dreams to the test and could Moore’s classroom be a breeding ground for Arkansas’ next generation of business leaders?

Teams from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and John Brown University at Siloam Springs each brought home $25,000 first-place prizes in the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Award business plan competition in Las Vegas. Tears for Life, the UA’s winning business plan in the graduate student division, is a medical diagnostic equipment company that is developing a non-invasive tear test kit that will screen women for breast cancer using proteins found in tears. It is led by three MBA candidates – Jared Greer, Bessie Williams and Chris Elizer – and an undergraduate business student, Jordan Greer, with medical expertise from two UAMS professors, Dr. Suzanne Klimberg and Dr. Michael Douglas. [Read more…]

College innovators were recognized Tuesday in the annual Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup for Entrepreneurial Development, presented by the Arkansas Economic Acceleration Foundation. The competition, featuring undergraduate and graduate-level business plans, is designed to encourage students of Arkansas’s universities and colleges to act on their ideas to produce tomorrow’s businesses. Awards were presented at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. More than 1,100 students representing 19 Arkansas colleges and universities have participated, and over the past eight years more than $785,000 has been awarded to student teams and their faculty advisors. [Read more…]