Master of Business Administration students from the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma placed No. 1 in the Case Competition track and the 90-Second Fast Pitch events at an international Business Plan Competition hosted recently by Chapman University.
The California Dreamin’ competition is an invitation-only event and the second largest university business plan competition in the nation. OU won competing against other prestigious universities, including Stanford University, University of California Berkley, Cambridge University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Price College’s recent success at California Dreamin’ marks the second time this academic year OU business students have won a case competition and the fifth time to place in the top three.
The team members – Stephen Soroosh, Mitchell Walser and Rachel Webb – competed against 34 other student teams and won $16,000 for placing first in two out of the three competition tracks. Their proposed company, Driven Analytics, delivers a mobile application for car owners to download to their smart phones that provides the driver real-time diagnostics specific to their car usage.
Ron Bolen, an assistant professor of Price College’s management and entrepreneurship division, helped coach the team and traveled with them to the competition.
“The Driven Analytics team should be commended. Faced with a daunting array of competition from some of the best schools in the U.S. and the U.K., they excelled in communicating their own, original concept in the Fast Pitch Competition as well as analyzing a standardized challenge and communicating their solution to a panel of judges. Prior to the competition, Driven Analytics completed more than 100 interviews with potential customers, vendors and others to finely hone their business model,” Bolen said. “Everyone at the Price College of Business and the entrepreneurship faculty are extremely proud of the team’s hard work and dedication.”
Ranked in the top 50 undergraduate business schools by U.S. News & World Report, the Price College of Business is one of the nation’s premier business colleges. This year, U.S. News & World Report ranks the college’s International Business program in the top 20 in the nation, while Entrepreneur magazine, in association with The Princeton Review, ranked the Entrepreneurship undergraduate program in the top 10 and graduate program in the top 25 in the nation.
