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Competition inspires big ideas

Students present their business plans to Bradley community members Wednesday in the Peplow Pavillion during the second round of the Big Ideas Competion.
photo by Austin Shone

Bradley students continued to demonstrate entrepreneurial enthusiasm during the second round of the Big Ideas Competition, hosted by the Turner School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, this Wednesday.

Student competitors gathered in the Peplow Pavilion to demonstrate their business ideas and inventions, ranging from a self-playing guitar to a yoga studio.

These students and their business ideas consisted of the 25 teams who had moved on from the first round of the event, but after this week, only four teams will continue on to the final round.

Ken Klotz, the managing director for the Turner School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, is in charge of coordinating Bradley’s first-ever Big Ideas Competition.

“It’s a learning opportunity for [competitors], to take an idea that just rattles around in their head at first, and express it in a couple of different formats,” Klotz said. “That’s where the learning occurs; in physically expressing [an idea] visually at the trade show and verbally expressing it at the elevator pitch.”

Anyone on the Hilltop who spent even just a few minutes visiting the event were more than spectators; they were given a judging form and asked to vote for the top-five teams and special awards. Selected community members, faculty and staff at Bradley were also judges for the event.

Audrey Roney, a sophomore marketing and music business major, is leading Fabricode, a company that sells apparel geared towards women in STEM fields. According to Roney, most of the women’s STEM apparel focused on being a “coder’s girlfriend or engineer girlfriend instead of being a coder yourself.”

“Women want to feel part of the inside jokes [at STEM companies] too … this helps them feel accepted,” Roney said.

Other businesses have already been operating in the Peoria community and are hoping to expand as a non-profit.

Hannah Ramlo, a graduate nonprofit leadership student, has been a certified yoga instructor for three years and is the executive director for Soulside Healing Arts, a company that brings yoga to workplaces and community settings. They are also looking to lead yoga at social services throughout Peoria.

Ramlo said she is hoping to win the competition so she can have funding for opening her own studio later this year.

These were just a few of the businesses that filled the Peplow Pavillian, but every so often, a guitar playing Smoke on the Water flew over every bit of noise and excitement in the room.

One team invented its own self-playing guitar. Michael Kuzma, a junior electrical engineering major, was the creative force behind it.

“The guitar allows you to visualize what you want to write and play … It’s for people who aren’t masters at guitar,” Kuzma said.

Besides the trade show, the other portion of the event was the elevator pitch. One member of each team had a maximum of three minutes to convince a panel of judges why their product fulfilled some form of a need in society.

After judges reviewed the teams’ scores and community judging forms, four teams will be moving on to the final round. Fabricode, Safety Seat, Self-Playing Guitar, and Soulside Healing Arts are the four businesses that will compete April 24. Only the top three teams will take home a monetary prize of $8,000, $5,000 or $2,000.

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