When the seed of inspiration comes, there is no time like the present to make that vision a reality. Rising to this challenge students across Alberta submitted their business plans in either the northern Centre for Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise (CEFE) or the southern Alberta Student Technology Innovation Challenge (STIC) business plan competitions. The top three finalists in each competition are now competing in TEC Edmonton's VenturePrize Student Business Plan competition to see who Alberta’s best is.

“The CEFE competition gave us an enormous amount of feedback from the judges and our professors. This enabled us to make improvements on our plan for the upcoming TEC VenturePrize competition,” said Tristan Willson. Willson and Heng Chen have developed Alberta Carbon, which is based on processing petroleum coke using microwave technology to turn it into activated carbon with applications in water treatment, air purification and other industries.

The TEC VenturePrize program offers technoprenuers training, mentoring and professional feedback on the fundamentals of a successful business plan with the prize being cash and in-kind services to get their businesses on their feet. The student competition is supported by Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.

For students like Justin Waghray, Alim Mitha, and Buke Steven Chen the mentorship was critical in expanding their network and getting direct feedback on their company, NeuroLogics Medical Solutions - which focuses on a new device to help diagnose shunt malfunction in patients with hydrocephalus, or ‘water on the brain’.

“Competitions like STIC and TEC VenturePrize are a great chance to take a project from the tech side and see its potential application in the real world. There are many aspects of commercialization that most engineers have difficulty noticing: including marketing, financials, and the value proposition. The TEC VenturePrize Seminar Series (free to students) is a great venue to hear professionals, in various fields, speak about the steps required for a successful product,” said Waghray.

In order to compete, students have to focus their business desires into a formal action plan. They take part in the Seminar Series where they learn about marketing, venture capital, and strategic management. In addition, participants receive opportunities to practice their business pitch in front of a panel of business experts, who provide valuable feedback to make their companies more appealing to investors.

Alexandr Kuzmin, Victor Prosolin, Dong Zhao, and Dmitry Ariskin with their company ProblemsStore.com, developed an online platform for people to exchange knowledge, leveraging the power of crowdsourcing. They will be competing against Tom Tran with his company E² Technologies, which he believes is the solution to reducing the cost of cleanrooms needed for photolithography, a process involved in microfabrification.

The diversity of these business concepts speaks to the caliber of up-and-coming technopreneurs in Alberta.

From Svetlana Sapelnikova’s business concept Molecular Tetris Inc a computational analytical platform technology software used for modeling and simulation of experiments on multiple scales to Tyler Cossetto’s company Orthopedic Nanocoating, which is based on thin film coating on implants that is more wear-resistant than any other commercially available orthopedic material – innovation based businesses are the new oil patch of Alberta.

Listen to the Innovation Anthology article.