Two major speakers, 20 free panel discussions on a wide range of topics and over 50 visiting entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, who will judge the business plan competition finalists, highlight the eighth annual Mark and Laura Willes Center for International Entrepreneurship conference at BYU-Hawaii from February 8-10, 2006. The theme of this year's conference, most of which is free and open to the public, is "Entrepreneurship: Empowering Students Worldwide."
An "elevator pitch" competition — the term refers to an approximately three-minute time span a striving entrepreneur might have to sell his idea during an captive-audience elevator ride — will serve as a pre-conference opening on Wednesday evening, February 8, at 7 p.m. in Aloha Center 155/165.
International motivational speaker Chester Elton, author of The 24-Carrot Manager and other books on "carrot culture" management — where employees are valued and appreciated for their contributions, creating passion and performance — will be the main speaker in the first general session of the conference on February 9 at 2:30 p.m. in the McKay Auditorium. Panel discussions led by the visiting entrepreneurs follow.
Later that evening Clint Arnoldus, CEO of Central Pacific Financial Corporation, Hawaii's fourth largest banking institution, will deliver the keynote address at the conference banquet. Arnoldus, a BYU (Provo) undergraduate, was the architect for the recent merger between his company and CB Bancshares Inc.
The highlight of the conference — the annual business plan competition — comes on Friday morning, February 10, at 11 a.m. in the McKay Auditorium. Following panel discussions at 9 and 10 a.m., six business plan competition finalist student teams will pitch their projects to the visiting entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, who voluntarily serve as judges.
Gregory V. Gibson, Director of BYU-Hawaii's Willes Center for International Entrepreneurship, explained the competition is divided between plans for developed and developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The first-place team in each category receives a $4,000 cash prize. Also this year for the first time the overall winner of the competition will receive a grand prize of $5,000.
In 2005 the developing nations first prize went to Tsogtbilegt Enkhbold and Erdenetsetseg Tumurbaatar, senior accounting majors from Mongolia for their convincing plan to establish a water damage restorative and professional carpet cleaning services business back home. Recent graduates Devin Moncur and Carson Ammons won in the developed category for their proposal to build an automated wakeboarding park on a five-acre lake in Phoenix, Arizona.
The second-place prizes last year went to Heber Moulton, a 2003 international business management grad who is currently working on an MBA in Honolulu, and his wife, December 2005 valedictorian Olga Bosch Moulton, for their plans to start up a Mexican restaurant in her home town of Khabarovsk in eastern Russia; and to Michael Kong, Jonathan Yuen, and Kisslan Chan who proposed building a private soccer stadium in their native Hong Kong.
"Every year the highlight of the conference is the business plan competition held on Friday afternoon," Gibson said. "Since BYU-Hawaii is the most diverse campus per capita in the United States with over 70 nations represented in its student body of 2,400, this competition is always a unique showcase of many different economies and cultures."