Students will have the opportunity to take their ideas for business ventures to the next level through the Emerging Talk entrepreneurial expo this weekend.

The expo, which will be held at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management on Friday and Saturday, is a student celebration of entrepreneurship, said Bruce Kingma, associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation and a professor at Whitman.

This year will mark the fourth annual Emerging Talk expo. But this year’s expo will be different, as it will include three competitions in which students can participate to obtain funding for their endeavors.

“This is focused on students who are interested in starting a venture — students that have a good idea, even if they are going to work full-time somewhere else, start while they are students, or if they are interested in starting a company 10 years down the road,” Kingma said.

The three competitions are the Raymond von Dran Innovation and Disruptive Entrepreneurship Accelerator Awards, the Panasci Business Plan Competition and the Invention and Creativity Competition for engineering. Between $220,000-$250,000 will be awarded through these competitions, Kingma said.

Having all three events take place during the same weekend allows for a larger celebration of student entrepreneurship, he said.

“There’s an enormous amount of money on the line, which makes us bigger than MIT, makes us bigger than Stanford in terms of what we award and the number of students we help fund, which makes us one of the top overall business plan competitions in the country,” Kingma said.

This year, Mike Smith, a graduate student, is in charge of planning the event. The fact that the expo is both geared toward students and run by students makes it different from similar events, Smith said.

“There are a lot of students who have great ideas but don’t know how to move them towards reality, so come here and we’ll give you the tools to go forward,” Smith said.

The Raymond von Dran competition has six categories: nanotech and high-tech; information technology; social and non-profit; energy and sustainability; products, services and big ideas; and health care and biotech. Often, students from various colleges present strong business ventures ranging from mobile applications to selling cupcakes, Kingma said.

In addition, about 50-60 student ventures will be tabling in the Whitman atrium for Demo Alley on Saturday, Kingma said. Demo Alley provides an opportunity to network and attract clients for student ventures, according to Emerging Talk’s website. Two students will each receive $500 for having the best and “crowd favorite” displays.

As Emerging Talk grows in popularity every year, Kingma said he expects there will be at least 400 students in attendance. This does not include the more than 100 students he estimated will make presentations for funding.

Said Kingma: “There’s really nothing like it through the year. Each university that has a presence in entrepreneurship, Syracuse included, has big events like this where they celebrate the really cool things students are doing.”

Published on April 10, 2013 at 11:37 pm

Contact Brendan: bskrisel@syr.edu