At a time when many adults are feeling the stresses of major economic challenges and a rapidly changing global marketplace, students at Camp BizSmart, an entrepreneurial business academy that inspires tweenpreneurs, are demonstrating the power of being energized by problems. These young aspiring entrepreneurs working directly with successful company CEO’s and founders, are given real business challenges that the companies are facing. If that were not a tough enough challenge, these students 11-15, who have no previous experience in creating business solutions, have only 10 days to complete their task.

Hope Lab VP Richard Tate discusses the business challenge

Udo Waibel, Hara co-founder, shares the business problem

Sound impossible? Than you don’t know these students and the amazing team of faculty and staff that mentor them through the essential hands-on skill building that allows them to build piece by piece the thought process and critical components that create a game-changing product to address a customers need. Camp BizSmart 2010 took on two big issues facing out nation, energy efficiency and childhood obesity.

Knowing that some of the best learning happens in the struggle, co-founders, Dr. Mike Gibbs and Peggy Gibbs, have created an intense, yet fun, immersion that simulates what it is like to startup a company or work on a project team to create and execute on a new business idea. Students learn to be persistent and collaborative while they gain confidence, problem solving and critical thinking to support and defend their business solution with fierce courage and passion.

By bringing great examples of successful entrepreneurship, these students heard why overcoming obstacles, creating new solutions to great challenges, and doing so in an ethical way that creates great impact for people all around the world is not only a good idea it is good business and therefore, worth their energy, their passion and their skills.

Inc Entrepreneur of the Year, Kevin Surace, CEO Serious Materials

Founded in 2007, Camp BizSmart has rapidly expanded to operate at 4 locations, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and in Oahu, Punahou and Iolani Schools with a newly introduced program in Hyderabad, India just this summer. Students who competed in the 2 week programs in Oahu, SCU and Stanford and won a 1st or 2nd place ranking were eligible for the grand finale round. The Camp BizSmart First Annual “Tweenpreneurs of the Year” competition has just concluded and after carefully reviewing the written business plans and final presentations from each eligible team, the judges have made their decisions for the top 1st and 2nd place teams of 2010.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the CampBizSmart, “Tweenpreneurs of 2010″:

• “Top Tweenpreneur Team of 2010 goes to Hara 2, Santa Clara University session” who has been named, the 1st place team for 2010 out of the 3 Camp BizSmart regional competitions. Team members are: Gregory Hosono, CEO, Devan Panchal, CTO, Gloria Liou, CFO, Maggie Sun, CMO, Jeremy Veis, CSO and Dylan Patel, CIO. The students were challenged by Hara executives to design a fun and creative iPad Hara OMI app that would help Fortune 500 businesses calculate and improve their OMI or efficient use of resources.

Hara 2, SCU wins grand finale, named 2010 top team

WAGIC rendering of Hara 2's winning solution

• “Tweenpreneur Team with the most innovative idea, ready to go to market, goes to Hope Lab 1, Santa Clara University session” who captured the 2nd place,  judges choice award  out of the 3 Camp BizSmart regional competitions. Team members are: Monica Thukral, CEO, Aditya Reddy, CTO, Seema Saini, CFO, Alyssa Saviage, CMO, Hannah Robinson, CSO, Raymond Zhuang, CIO. Hope Lab executives have been working on reducing childhood obesity and challenged students to test, evaluate and improve upon their concept of an activity tracker, the Zamzee prototype, to engage and create effective incentives for tweens 11-14 to get active and get healthy.

Hope Lab 1, SCU wins 2nd place in grand prize 2010

Hope Lab 1, SCU 2nd place winning design, WAGIC rendering

Both teams, as part of their grand prize, will make presentations to the company that provided their business problem and will engage in a lively discussion with the executives on the details of their solution.  Much like a product development team within a company, they will find out what the executive team thinks about their solution and what is required to actually take their business solution to market.  Students learn during Camp BizSmart that, “lots of people have dreams, entrepreneurs have goals” – and, “an idea is just that – an idea – until you successfully execute upon it”.  Therefore, these candid conversations with company executives, help the students to understand what is required to take a great idea into the marketplace to let the customer decide what is truly successful. A valuable lesson to learn early in life.

Camp BizSmart not only inspires young entrepreneurs, they are helping students be confident and courageous and use critical thinking when solving problems, embracing change as a natural state and looking forward to creating bold innovations that have positive impact.

So, when you find yourself concerned about the state of the world, remember that organizations like Camp BizSmart are inspiring young entrepreneurs to be the difference they want to see in the world! Founders, Mike and Peggy Gibbs, believe that providing these young people with these essential skills will create the thoughtful inventors and entrepreneurs we need to ignite a renaissance of critical thinkers with a can-do spirit!

Camp BizSmart, CEO Mike Gibbs says, "These young entrepreneurs are the ones to watch!"

Special thanks go to the company sponsors and their executives who worked with their teams to provide Camp BizSmart business problems this year: Udo Waibel, Amit Chatterjee and Katherine Brittain of Hara and James Bickford of Tigo and Darren Kimura of Sopogy in the energy efficiency space; and Carey White and Larry Tobin of Club One, Inc. and Pat Christen, Richard Tate, Liz Song and Chris Murchison of Hope Lab in the health and fitness space. Ken and Ron Johnson of WAGIC, who provided their design team, Anders, Cassie, Valerie, Sueng, and Steve to make the students sketches come to life. Faculty mentors, Howard Charney, Cisco Sr. VP, Kevin Surace, CEO, Serious Materials, Maigread Eichten, Eichten Consulting, James Bickford, Tigo Business Development, Paul Witkay, Founder, Alliance of CEO’s, Greg Kim, lawyer and Russel Cheng, entrepreneur, Robert Yonover, inventor, Sharon Web and Chris Horgan, intellectual property. Business Plan Competition sponsor for Silicon Valley sessions: Dan’l Lewin, Sr. VP, Microsoft; Site sponsors, Jim Sweeney, Dir. Precourt Center for Energy Efficiency, Stanford University, Dan Aguiar, Dir. Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University, Ann Yoneshige, Iolani School and Cathy Kawano-Ching, and Casey Agena, Punahou School, Oahu. and Mr. K. Sharat Chandra and Mr. T. Anatharajan, for arranging the Indian School for Business, Hyderabad. Mini-case sponsors: Ron Hazelton with iBuild2 and Tim Jahnigan and Mal Walwick with One World Futbol and Bronson Chang -Uncle Clay’s.  Competition judges, Lata Krishnan, Bill Reichert, Manish Chandra, David Dembitz, Harry Motro, George Chao, Maigread Eichten, Paul Witkay, Greg Kim, Patt Steiner and Robin Campaniano. And to our great Camp Directors – Bryan Cockel, John Rankin and Ellen Pieterse, our amazing staff, facilitators and leaders in training  at each site – you were great!

Thanks to you all for inspiring Young Entrepreneurs! It’s been quite a year, we look forward to expanding even more to inspire yet more students with entrepreneurial thinking and problem solving!  We are already signing up great companies to provide innovative business problems for students to solve in 2011. If you know of a curious student age 11-15 who loves to solve problems and learn about business while they do -you  will want to tell them about Camp BizSmart.

Tweenpreneurs attending the Santa Clara University session of Camp BizSmart took on two of the big problems of the day – companies ability to track and reduce their resource useage and childhood obesity.

The 4 companies providing business problems in these areas were: Tigo and Hara – energy efficiency solutions and Hope Lab and Club One Fitness – health and fitness solutions.

New company, iBuild2, provided a mini-design challenge that allowed students to exercise their creativity and design to come up with potential activity kits for children to work with safe tools while learning basic design and building skills. Each team of students came up with one or two potential products. Here is just an example:

Gaining design skills while creating an actual product

Ron Hazelton, affectionately known as the “The House Doctor”, has created iBuild2 with his wife Lynn to provide children with a safe way to learn to use design and building tools. They were pleased by the creativity of the students and recognized each design. Ron Johnson, of WAGIC, who also leads the team of designers who act as the vendor to all Camp BizSmart student designs, was on hand to help judge the students’ creations.

Mini-design case helps students gain important design skills

In addition, students from Camp BizSmart Oahu, were Skyped in to share their business solutions and carefully matched with non-competitive teams.

Skyping in Oahu students to discuss ideas

Applying skills gained on mini-cases, the seven teams of students brainstormed potential solutions, for the Hara, Tigo, Club One Fitness and HopeLab business problems. support and then defend the solution they believed would best address the business problem that company executives provided.

These teams presented their business solution at Microsoft, Silicon Valley, to an esteemed panel of judges: Maigread Eichten, George Chao, Harry Motro and Paul Witkay.

Judges question students at Microsoft

Competition results for the Santa Clara University session of Camp BizSmart:

The Hara 2 team captured the 1st place for the best business plan and presentation from the Camp BizSmart Santa Clara University session.

Hara team 2 wins 1st place

Hope Lab team 1 captured the 2nd place award, Santa Clara University session, “for the most innovative idea ready to go to market”

Hope Lab team 1 wins "most innovative idea" at Microsoft

During the 2 week immersion into entrepreneurial business skills, students were inspired by successful entrepreneurs who shared personal stories that illustrated how to build great teams, overcome obstacles,and stretch to innovate in order to create value for the customer which translates into making a company successful.

Dr. Ellen Pieterse, SCU Camp Director, checks results of the egg drop design contest

Camp BizSmart Faciliators, SCU sr and grad students, Becky, Angelique, Alex and Mike

Each year, founders Peggy and Mike Gibbs look for exciting new companies that passionately are making a difference and providing an example of a self-sustainable organization – this year, we recognize One World Futbol for bringing a great innovative solution executed brilliantly – the indestructible soccer ball – so strong it can survive a lion – to youth in places ravaged by war, poverty, and natural disasters. Camp BizSmart students were inspired by this amazing story and look forward to helping founders Tim Jahnigan and Lisa Tarver, continue to generate interest. Hats off to you Tim and Lisa!

One World Futbol VP Mal Warwick inspires students

On the final day of camp, students in Hyderabad, India Skyped in their business solutions to local judges, Peggy and Mike Gibbs, founders of Camp BizSmart, who joined two judges in India.

Hyderabad students pitch their solutions via Skype

The Santa Clara University Camp BizSmart session connected students from Oahu and Hyderabad with students on the campus of SCU in Silicon Valley truly representing the universal interest in gaining entrepreneurial skills and inspiring young students 11-15 to gain business acumen that will propel them forward.

“We are grateful to Dan Aguiar, Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and to Linda Jenkins, executive assistant of the center, at Santa Clara University for sponsoring Camp BizSmart, and sharing our vision of inspiring young entrepreneurs to gain great skills that will provide great benefit to them, their families, their communities, and the world.” Mike and Peggy Gibbs, co-founders of Camp BizSmart.

Peggy Gibbs thanks SCU CIE Dir. Dan Aguiar & Linda Jenkins

Dr. Mike Gibbs with Additya Reddy, named the "student most likely to be an entrepreneur"

Stay tuned for the Camp BizSmart grand finale announcement of the top two teams of 2010!

The competition for top student team of Camp BizSmart 2010 is definitely on! Each year we say the business solutions the student teams come up with are amazing. And this year, looking at the first round from teams competing at our Stanford session – every team brought it! But who won this first round?

HopeLab Team 1 - Stanford session

HopeLab Team 1 – Stanford session, was awarded first place for the best business plan and presentation by the esteemed panel of judges. HopeLab Team 1 -Stanford, was lead by student CEO, Tony Klachin, with CTO, Shaurey Vetsa, CMO, James Otani, CIO, Mohnish Shah, CFO, Ashley Pak, CMFO Grant Narasin and CSO, Nick LaBruna. The team created a winning solution using the HopeLab Zamzee device, to encourage tweens to be active.

Club One Fitness Team 2 - Stanford session

The second place team, named “the most innovative marketing idea” was the Club One Fitness Team 2. Student team members are: CEO, Claire Wang, CTO, Chirag Toprani, CSO, Gabriel Cao, CMO, Jessica Xu, CIO, Valentine Nguyen and CFO, Truman Leung. This team came up with a winning marketing idea to encourage healthy habits in tweens.

In addition individual awards were captured by: Tony Klachin (Stanford Camp 1), and Gabriel Cao (Stanford Camp 2), named “most likely to be the next Steve Jobs” and Sammer Vij (Stanford Camp1) and Karen Sung (Stanford Camp 2), named “most inspirational leader and entrepreneur”. All of our students worked hard but these students set themselves apart by displaying heightened persistence, innovation, critical thinking and problem solving while inspiring their teams and other students.

That’s all we can report for now because the competition is still going on, with additional teams working on their solutions for these business problems as well as ones from other companies. Student Teams actual solutions won’t be made public until the competition finale. So continue to watch our blog for the latest update.

Judges panel - Stanford Camp BizSmart session

Judges for the Camp BizSmart Stanford session July 16, 2010, held at Microsoft’s Executive Conference Center were: David Dembitz, lead judge, Lata Krishnan, Bill Reichert, Manish Chandra, Chris Law, Harry Motro and George Chao.

Camp BizSmart 2010 will have 1st place winners named at each of its three locations holding 10 day Camp BizSmart programs: Camp BizSmart at Stanford University, July 6-17 (which just concluded), Camp BizSmart Oahu shared by Iolani and Punahou schools, July 26-Aug 6, and Camp BizSmart at Santa Clara University, Aug 2-13,2010.

Camp BizSmart operates a 10 day, business academy where students work hands-on to gain 21st Century business and entrepreneurial skills. Student teams are given a real world business problem to solve from company executives. Every company that provides a business problem has an executive come to Camp BizSmart to discuss the objective and desired outcome just as if they were a project team within the company. Student teams work to solve, support and defend their solution to a panel of judges to compete for the 2010 best team business solution.

Special thanks to our Camp BizSmart Stanford session angels:

James Sweeney, Dir. of the Precourt Energy Center at Stanford University. Business problem sponsors - Hara, Tigo, HopeLab and Club One Fitness. Business Plan Stanford Competition host: Microsoft Our fantastic and inspiring entrepreneurs: Howard Charney, Sr. VP Cisco, Kevin Surace, CEO, Serious Materials, Maigread Eichten, CEO, Eichten Consulting, James Bickford,Tigo Energy and Chris Horgan, Pinnacle Partners and Ron Hazelton, iBuild2. The WAGIC crew of Anders, Cassie, Valerie and Steve, lead by Ron Johnson,and the esteemed judges panel listed above. The students, faculty and staff of Camp BizSmart thank you for sharing your wisdom, experience and inspiration!

So game on! The best from each of the three sessions: Stanford, Oahu and Santa Clara University will compete for the honor of being named the best of the best for Camp BizSmart 2010. Stay tuned for the next 1st and 2nd place winners to be announced from each site as they conclude. The Camp BizSmart 2010 grand finale 1st place team and 2nd place marketing idea will be fiercely competitive and the excitement will continue to build until they are named. No matter who wins the final competition – we all win because these bright students are sure to create priceless value for their communities and the world! I can’t think of anything we need more when you consider all the problems in the world that need to be solved!

Award winning green tech startup, Hara Software Inc. returns to present Camp BizSmart students with a new business challenge to solve. Student teams will design a fun and creative iPad app to help big customers track their resource usage so they can save money and leave smaller footprints.

In this tough economy, Hara knows that one of the best ways to grow and profit while minimizing risk is to use resources as efficiently as possible. Companies say that”what you can measure – you can manage” and “while not all products may last forever, they may leave a lasting impression”.

That’s why Hara has developed the concept of “organizational metabolism”. Hara enables organizations to understand, manage and optimize their organizational metabolism – the collective resources consumed and expended by an organization – including energy, water, waste, carbon and other natural resources.

See how CEO Amit Chatterjee and Hara Software helped the City of
Palo Alto to save more than $2M and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15% over the next 3 years.

Hara has emerged as an industry leader with high-profile customers including, supermarket giant, Safeway Inc., and soft-drinkmaker, The Coca-Cola Co., to name only a few.

The White House is so impressed by the way Hara Software helped these companies as well as others that CEO Amit Chatterjee was invited to the White House to discuss innovation and job creation.

Udo Waibel, co-founder, returns along with other great Hara staff to inspire and mentor the students’ as they work on the important issue of energy efficiency!

Serious Materials Team brainstorming A 21st century classroom design

Camp BizSmart is pleased to announce  our newest location for ”Tweenpreneurs” age 11-15 will be  at Stanford University July 6-17, 2010.  Innovative companies with passionate & inspirational founders & leaders from companies like Serious Materials, Hara, Valence Energy, and FRS, challenge the students to solve important “hot topic” problems.  Executive mentors from Apple, Google, Cisco and WAGIC mentor and coach the students in the basics of innovation and design, business planning, marketing and sales, idea generation, and finance.   Students hone their writing and presentation skills as they prepare to pitch their business plan to a panel of Silicon Valley investors.  Students compete for the ”top business plan” and  “best go to market idea”.  The top two teams pitch to CEO’s in the boardroom following Camp BizSmart.  The grand prize winning team appears at a prestigious entrepreneur event. Spaces are limited – sign up now!

Valence Energy Team pitching a cool invention to clean solar panels