By Sue McMurray
Intelligent technology to enhance the staples of life — personal wealth, health care, recreation, food and a healthy environment — were the top business ventures recognized at Washington State University’s 23rd annual Business Plan Competition Thursday, April 30.
WSU College League team, Opulence AI, won the Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories $10,000 grand prize.
Opulence AI, created by Carson College of Business entrepreneurship student Aidan Finnegan and co-founders Ben Swanzey, a software engineering major in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, and Royse Cozzens, founder of Cozzens Consulting, is an artificial intelligence system enabling residential contractors to streamline every stage of building a home.
The WSU Center for Entrepreneurship (CfE) hosted the competition, where 120 venture teams from WSU, other universities, and Washington state high schools competed in three different leagues, vying for cash and in-kind prizes totaling more than $50,000.
Business ideas included intelligence platforms that analyze personal finance decisions for optimum wealth building, help health care providers detect patients at risk for addiction, and support millennial women to grow their creative side through crafting. Other ideas included an intelligent device that returns golf putts, a sandwich shop with rotating global cuisine, a sustainable use for invasive starfish that benefits the aquarium industry, a sports photography business and a medical rewarming system extending viability of donated organs from mere hours to years.
Source : wsu.edu