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Biotechs
Dominate
Business Plan
Competition
Student team MuscleMorph
carried away the top prize
from the Wharton Business
Plan Competition (WBPC),
continuing the biotechnology
sector's prominence as
the hottest industry in the
WBPC. The grand prize
winner in five out of the
past six years has been a biotech
(as were five out of this
year's great eight finalists).
MuscleMorph plans to
enhance prosthetics with a
patent-pending device that
uses electro-active polymers
to convert electrical energy
into mechanical energy.
The team impressed the
judges with a technologically
advanced motor that is
lighter, higher performing,
and more cost efficient than
any currently offered, earning
the $20,000 grand prize.
The prize was awarded at
the Wharton School's annual
Venture Finals April
25, 2006, where student
finalists received a total of
$70,000 in combined cash
prizes, access to capital and
in-kind legal/accounting
services. The students of
MuscleMorph, which already
won the grand prize
of PennVention 2006—an invention competition
sponsored by the
University of Pennsylvania's
Weiss Technology House—include Rahul Kothari,
WG'06, of Aurora, ON;
Howard Katzenberg,
WG'06, of Rockland
County, NY; Kevin
Galloway, a University of
Pennsylvania PhD candidate
in engineering from Lake
Stevens, WA; and Rodrigo
Alvarez, a Penn alumnus
from Mexico City.
The second prize of
$10,000 and the Frederick
H. Gloeckner Award
($5,000 for highest-ranking
undergraduate team) went
to IntelliStem, which plans
to market hip implants that
use electrical stimulation to
prevent pain associated with
bone loss. The third prize of
$5,000 went to Home-Base,
a call-center outsourcing
agency that hires spouses of
active military personnel as
agents working out of their
own homes.
Over the years, the
Wharton Business Plan
Competition has seen
numerous student teams
go on to become successful
businesses including
PayMyBills.com, BuySafe,
NetConversions, Stata
Labs, DealMaven, Verge
Solutions, and MicroMRI.
In fact, grand prize winners
from four of the past five
years are still in business.
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