The nationally recognized Johns Hopkins University Business Plan Competition, hosted by the Center for Leadership Education, provides an opportunity for students to take a novel idea or innovative technology and develop a business plan based around it. Starting with a concept, students build an understanding of their target market, analyze potential competitors, craft an effective market entry strategy, and present their plans to industry professionals and venture capitalists.

The competition showcases the talent of our students as they present business plans developed over the course of the year. Each team gives a refined seven minute presentation followed by eight minutes of questions from a panel of judges compromised of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and alumni. All the business plans in each category are then reviewed and scored by a panel of judges.

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AND THE WINNERS ARE...

 

 

General Business Winners:

1st Place -KIDVENTIONS
Kidventions is a toy company which leverages three-dimensional (3D) printing to empower our customers, kidventors, to create truly customized toys. Using intuitive computer aided design software, 123D Creature, kidventors can easily design virtually any figure or accessory in less than 15 minutes and watch as their toys materialize in 3D printers right in our store.

 

 

2nd Place - RESEARCH CALENDAR, LLC
Research Calendar, LLC is a technology company providing participant recruitment and market research services to corporations, hospitals, and universities. Research Calendar’s unique, simple, and real-time online marketplace bridges the omnipresent gap between the conductors and participants of studies to streamline the research process, improve demographic targeting, and decrease costs.

 

 

3rd Place - RHIZOID TECHNOLOGIES
Rhizoid Technologies is developing a suite of process technologies to improve crop yields. Our technologies will transform marginal and/or nonproductive spaces into highly productive croplands while simultaneously diminishing energy, labor, pesticide, and water inputs. In addition, we will reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff pollution by one to two orders of magnitude per ton of food harvested.

 

 

 

Medical Technology and Life Sciences Winners:

 

1st Place - PATHOS CLEARVIEW
PathoS (Pathology Solutions) delivers low-cost solutions that streamline the processes used in diagnostic pathology. Our first device, ClearView, is a mechanical stabilization system comprising a reusable applicator and a disposable component that enables pathologists to quickly prepare microscopy slides of mechanically-weak tissues, helping to prevent 66,000 unnecessary reoperations each year.

 

 

2nd Place - ECHOSURE
EchoSure has developed a novel, noninvasive technology which can detect vascular complications in reconstructive surgery patients, affording doctors time to fix the problems quickly. The dual component EchoSure system makes areas of interest easy to locate and analyzes the vessels in these areas to determine if the patients’ recoveries are proceeding well.

 

 

3rd Place - SYMPSOLUTIONS PRESENTS ACCURIGHT
SympSolutions has developed AccuRIGHT, a novel device to treat resistant hypertension within a clinician’s office. AccuRIGHT noninvasively eliminates the carotid body, a central contributor to hypertension, without an operating room, thereby expanding the eligible patient population and facilitating adoption.

 

 

Social Enterprise Winners:

 

1st Place - HEALTHIFY
Healthify is a Baltimore, MD based startup building a modular eHealth platform to help care teams address varied patient psychosocial risks and conduct smarter patient outreach. Our software improves health outcomes in primarily low-income populations by empowering patients with information on the basic resources needed to be healthy, contextualizing a patient’s environment for a healthcare provider, and leveraging mHealth tools to coordinate care and engage patients outside the clinical setting.

 

 

2nd Place - RAPID MALNUTRITION ASSESSMENT TOOL
Currently, the accepted metric used to assess malnutrition in children is mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), yet this method has numerous problems. Our newly developed device curtails errors in measuring arm circumference, plus we streamline the measurement process by leveraging low cost mobile phones as a method for data entry.

 

 

3rd Place - PQ INC.
PQ stands for “pink quotient” –kind of like an emotional quotient, but for gender sensitivity! Essentially, PQ is a gender sensitivity certification that will be made available to matrimonial web sites across India. For a small fee, potential brides and grooms can see if their future partner has a baseline level of gender sensitivity and also have access to information on ways to become more gender sensitive, while encouraging the same in their relationships.