UMaine Students, Alum Take First in International Business Plan Competition
Contact: Contacts: Matthew Rodrigue, 774-487-8396; Richard Grant, 581-1971; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — As winter descended on the Canadian Maritimes last month, the timing for two University of Maine students and a recent graduate couldn’t have been better to introduce at an international business plan competition a marketable proposal to improve the efficiency of home heating oil delivery in frigid climates.
Competing against 19 other teams from as far away as Eastern Europe and Asia, the UMaine team won the first place overall “private sector” grand prize and an award of $5,000 for its innovative business plan. Team members included Brigham McNaughton, a UMaine junior from Springfield, Vt., majoring in business, William Sulinski, a senior from Dedham, Maine majoring in economics, and Matthew Rodrigue, an engineering major from Wilton who graduated in 2004.
The CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) Business Plan Competition was a two-day event held in early December at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Richard Grant, director of graduate programs and executive education for the Maine Business School, accompanied the UMaine team as coach and advisor.
Rodrigue and McNaughton presented the team’s detailed business plan for a hypothetical new company, Consumer Energy Research Corporation, at the competition. The company and concept may become a reality, according to Rodrigue, who now works as an engineering consultant for Woodard & Curran engineers’ Dedham, Mass. office and is a member of the UMaine Board of Visitors.
Because of the likelihood that Rodrigue, McNaughton and Sulinski will seek patents for the company, they were unable to publicly discuss specifics of how they can improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of home heating oil delivery. However, they did impress a panel of judges.
“Mr. Rodrigue and Mr. McNaughton were polished in their presentation, they knew their plan well and fielded questions effortlessly and with confidence,” observed one judge, Barbara Touchie, a trade executive with Business New Brunswick in Fredericton. “Both young men were ‘on their game’ the day of the competition and went the extra mile to pay attention to detail. The business plan was well put together and during the presentation component, both Mr. Rodrigue and Mr. McNaughton removed any confusion surrounding the technology on which the product is based and made the concept easy to understand,” she said.
With Sulinski’s concept, the team borrowed from the expertise of the university’s Target Technology Incubator and Advanced Manufacturing Center, which helps inventors develop prototypes to take to market. They refined the concept, cost analysis, predicted outcomes, marketing strategies and the estimated return on investment – in short, a plausible business plan.
“We knew we had a good idea going into it, but there were a lot of sharp folks up there,” Rodrigue says of the competition.
Other competing proposals included starting companies that used computers to evaluate symptoms to help doctors diagnose diseases, building and selling customized mailboxes to resemble a customer’s automobile or house, opening a restaurant and new ways to protect airline pilots and crew from unruly passengers.
The international business plan competition also taught Rodrigue and McNaughton to think more like business managers than students.
“Matt and I had a kind of defining moment when we realized we were looking at this (project) from an undergraduate perspective,” McNaughton says. “The perspective we learned was ‘what do I need to do to get this to a mass market in six months?’ “
They also got to meet the judges, some of whom are well-placed in business in New England and who could become future consultants, business allies or even investors.
Dan Innis, dean of the College of Business, Public Policy and Health, says the international business competition is one of many off-campus experiences that expose students to the realities of business.
“We’re extremely proud of these students and of Matt,” Innis says. “University education extends beyond the classroom and into the business community. The Maine Business School makes an effort to insure that students have the tools that they need to compete regionally, nationally and globally in the constantly changing business environment. The results of this competition demonstrate that we’re achieving that goal.”