Twenty-five students working individually or as part of a team presented nine different business plans. Two groups of five judges each ranked the students, using a unique point system in which points were equivalent to dollars. Each judge was given 1,000 points to give to the students. One point was equal to one dollar.

Twenty-five students working individually or as part of a team presented nine different business plans. Two groups of five judges each ranked the students, using a unique point system in which points were equivalent to dollars. Each judge was given 1,000 points to give to the students. One point was equal to one dollar.

For the undergraduate competition, first place went to ModishArt.com’s team of Jonathan Ross, Becky Freeman, Lindyn Lamb and Chase Bridgforth, who created a business plan to connect artists with consumers via a Web site. Second place went to Ryan Wesneski, Stephanie Seybert, Kristin Henjum and Jeff Flick of MedConnect, a communication system that connects hospital ER rooms, doctors and emergency medical technicians.

On the graduate level, Derrick Loveless came in first with his plan for Lone-Star Thermoplastics, a company that applies thermoplastic paints to highways. Second place for the graduate competition went to Flash Alert’s Will Lightfoot and Jackie Dubois Miller, who are working on a new lighting detection system for the media market.

Featured guest of the competition was Ricky DeRennaux, a third-place finalist on The American Inventor television show on ABC this past summer.

“The student teams received great experience from the competition through presenting and defending their ideas to a solid panel of experts that included potential investors,” said program director Lowell Busenitz. “The panel of judges also offered some solid suggestions to the student teams for further developing their concepts. The real success of the competition is that it brought the realities of the real world to bear on the projects.”

Ranked in the top 50 by both U.S. News and World Report and by Forbes magazine, the Michael F. Price College of Business is one of the nation’s premier business colleges. For more information, please contact Kate Burch, director of communication, at (405) 325-2463 or kburch@ou.edu.