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CampusIncubator.com Start-Up Prize Awards Ceremony
Congratulations to the winning team: Mission84 and their Item Tracking Network (ITN)
Mission84’s product, the Item Tracking Network (ITN), is focused on resolving the data input problem facing existing Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. It will create a true real-time, motion-tracking system that can give 100% accurate inventory balances, location, and work completely in conjunction with these existing systems. The product is expected to provide this variable to the highest degree of accuracy, and add to the value of any WMS or ERP system. It is hoped that ITN will be the ultimate virtual solution to track inventory location and balance, prevent theft and even serve as a transaction-processing tool.
Management Team
Sasa Bosnjak
Dragoslav Culum
Dana Culum
Constantinos Coursaris
Dan Priljeva
Judging
This executive summary entry was ranked first by our three judges out of 15 entries.
The judges for the “start-up prize” of $1,000:
Judge #1 Jesko von Windheim
Judge #2 Yasar M. Haddara
Judge #3 Ray Darke
Congratulations and thanks to all those teams below who submitted executive summaries! They were broad-based and very interesting. Remember that the contest is still wide open for anyone to win, so keep going and submit your final business plans.
Team captains and team names are listed below.
1. Robert Palmer – ExecuConsult
2. Bashir M. Versi - Botech
3. Daniel Priljeva - Mission 84
4. Adi Tanuwidjaja - Robot Canada
5. Ying Liu - Ying’s
6. Laura Hollick - Soul Art
7. Marc Folch - Drawing Board
8. Peter Hitchcock - Iron Fusion
9. Mark Carter - Binary 7
10. Paul Aitchison - AP Fashion
11. Paul Aitchison - Model Manager
12. David Lemstra - Clean Play
13. Matthew Kim - Jambo
14. Adam Mosam - FIN
15. Ramez Salti - Campus House
Dean Baba's Speech
Campus incubator Business Plan Challenge Award
November 29, 2002
Canada as a nation is well poised to create wealth in the 21st century through innovation. For a small country like ours, to be globally competitive, we need to develop a strategy that stands up to the competitive advantages of larger countries. The recent federal initiative on innovation by Minister Alan Rock and the provincial initiative by Minister Jim Flagherty are simply for us to play an optimal role in contributing to global wealth creation. Having participated in many of these round tables and summits on innovation, I can say that the consensus is that technical innovation and business innovation must go hand in hand in order to create economic and social value.
We, in Canada, have the infrastructure and the mind set to make a success of such a mission. Besides being called the Great White North, we are also the Great Wired North.
We are the first in terms of percentage of people going to college and university – a precondition for a knowledge economy.
We are home to eight of the World’s top business schools – including ours! Only the US and Great Britain has more.
We are the first country to connect all our schools and libraries to the Internet.
We are the leader among the G8 Nations in getting wired – basic cable and telephone service.
More importantly, we have the three T’s that foster innovation: technology, talent and tolerance.
McMaster University is known around the nation as the Innovation University. Our motto has been one of inspiring innovation and discovery. We put our innovations and discovery to use in changing tomorrow today. In fact, the School of Business is the first to have a dedicated research center for the Management of Innovation in Canada and again the first to offer an MBA stream on Innovation Management.
The campus incubator and the business plan challenge award are more recent examples of implementation of that vision - the vision of innovation, the vision of discovery and the vision of change. It is based on the notion that great ideas need careful husbanding to create value: wealth, health, employment, and quality of life to mention a few.
We have built capacity in the recent past toward promotion of technology and science. We have invested in our science, engineering, and medical programs in our universities and colleges and are ready to benefit from the discoveries that flood out of our universities. However, we have come to realize that many great ideas and brilliant discoveries remain on the drawing board. Why? Because we have not quite developed the absorptive capacity so that these ideas get to the market place and create economic value not only to the scientist or engineer but to the whole society. Generative and absorptive capacities must be balanced. This is precisely where the campus incubator adds value. Through the campus incubator, and its various activities we attempt to encourage entrepreneurs to take the next step and the next step and so on toward systematically transforming the invention to an innovation. Its activities are designed to help participants better understand what’s involved in starting up a new company and covers the basics of writing effective business plans, intellectual property issues and raising capital. Innovation is not a “lone ranger” business. It calls for competent teams, multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted that would put together an effective business plan for efficient implementation. The incubator, when it is fully functional, will create a context for a
At the end of the day, I would like to see McMaster spin off companies that create wealth and employment in the community and returns value to the university.
- Network of interested entrepreneurs, investors, and potential partners
- Training in specific business planning skills from experienced professionals
- Access to venture capitalists
- Mentorship by successful and seasoned members of the new venture community
- Content-rich feedback on the business plan from the world class entrepreneurs, investors, and professional service providers on the Judging Panel
- Teambuilding opportunities to create a winning team of founders and meet like-minded people
The first step is the Business Plan challenge. We had created an opportunity to the entire McMaster community to participate in this challenge and entertained entries from a broad spectrum of students for the contest. The support came from the Vice President of Research office, the Faculty of Engineering, and The Faculty of Health Sciences and of course, the DeGroote School of Business. Dr. Khalid Nainar, the founding Director of the Campus Incubator initiative, sowed the seeds in the year 2000. From then on, Dr. Nainar and Maitre Marcel Mongeon with the help of Barbara Hourigan labored hard to make this dream a reality…this is what I was saying earlier. They took an idea, created value and brought it to the “market” place. Here! Bravo!
The entries were broad-ranged across the disciplines. Some 15 exciting ideas have been put forth in these entries from 14 people. A panel of judges including professionals, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs judged the entries. Now Dr. Khalid Nainar will announce the results of this phase of the Business Plan Challenge Competition…
Khalid…
