Teams Win $50,000 and $10,000 Business Development Awards To Launch New Enterprises

Irvine, Calif., June 18, 2002 -- Plans for a joint-replacement device and a Web-based outsourcing system won $50,000 and $10,000 prizes, respectively, in the third annual ThinkTank/UC Irvine Graduate School of Management campuswide business plan competition. Winning teams Joint Solutions and Orbidyne will use their business development awards to transform their plans into viable enterprises.

Winners were announced last week following an all-day presentation and judging session. Local business executives served as advisors to the teams and as judges. Scott Blum, founder of ThinkTank, an Aliso Viejo-based company that provides infrastructure, financing and management expertise to emerging technology and commerce companies, donated $100,000 to fund the competition.

This was the first year that the competition has been open to the entire UCI campus. Entries came from business, engineering, biomedicine and science.

First prize of $50,000 went to a plan developed by Joint Solutions, a four-person team headed by Tak Cheung, who graduated this month from UCI School of Medicine. His teammates are Heidi Chen, who earned her MBA degree this week from GSM, MIT graduate Eric Jan and UCI alumnus Jerry Jew. Joint Solutions overcame 13 other semi-finalist teams.

Joint Solutions' winning plan develops a medical device to decrease the rejection and complication rates of replacement joints. It is a system of encapsulating the joint surfaces with a flexible, nonporous fabric and bathing them in a lubricant to increase the lifespan of the components and decrease patient pain and suffering. With his background as an engineering student and as a medical student, Cheung envisioned a way to prevent the problems he observed in the surgeries in which he assisted.

Cheung will use the $50,000 award to conduct formal market analyses and research on the product and on other companies producing similar products, purchase software and invest in computer and communications infrastructure. Cheung hopes his teammates will help him transform the award-winning business plan into a real company. "All the team members are very capable and worked well together on this business plan. I will give them the option of joining me to set up our company," he said.

Cheung is seeking additional venture capital to help launch Joint Solutions. "Through the contest, venture capital companies have approached us. GSM alumnus and attorney Robert Flack, our contest advisor, gave us a lot of support and guidance and will help us find an interested venture capital company," he said.

Cheung credited the workshops organized by GSM with helping the competitors polish their business plans and presentation skills. "GSM professors and corporate executives instructed us on how to identify, write and present a business plan, how to prepare financial statements and how to get the venture capital," Cheung said.

Second prize of $10,000 went to Orbidyne, Inc., a team composed of GSM MBA student Tami Smith and GSM alumni Ron Taix, Brian Steele, Mahesh Calavai and Joe Donoghue. Orbidyne, Inc., a Laguna Niguel company, is developing a Web-based system that helps manage outsourcing relationships in the high-tech electronics manufacturing industry.

Orbidyne's plan emerged from industry research on collaborative manufacturing in a global environment, said CEO Ron J. Taix. He defines their next generation solution as "distributed partner management."

Teams submitted ideas for a wide range of enterprises, including a vision phone, a reading machine and smoke-testing services for the diesel motor industry. The contest was designed as a valuable experience for future entrepreneurs to gain a sense of what to expect in the real business world, said Barbara Claybaugh, director of external relations for the school and a conference organizer.

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