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MBA students, professor team up to create business |
| By
Matt Lockwood |
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Feb 1, 2008 |
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Since 1987, Dr. Carlos Baptista, associate professor of neurosciences, has dreamed of creating a business using his method of preserving human and animal organs for use as teaching tools.
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| Dr. Carlos Baptista posed for a photo with an example of his organ preservation method, a plastinated cow heart, on the Health Science Campus. |
The method, called plastination, involves multiple steps in which water in tissue cells is replaced with a specialized plastic. It takes two to three months to plastinate an organ, but the result is a highly accurate, long-lasting model. The process has been popularized lately through the popular Body World exhibits.
Baptista said besides having trouble finding the time to pursue the idea, he didn’t know where to start with a business plan.
Twenty years later, he is finally exploring his dream with the help of MBA students Scott Haas and Gregory Metzger.
The professor, based on the Health Science Campus, and the students, based on Main Campus, united through a new program in the College of Business Administration’s Center for Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation that teams entrepreneurs both inside and outside the University with MBA students and faculty advisers. Under the leadership of business faculty members, students help startup companies with everything from business and marketing plans to financial analyses and organizational planning.
Haas and Metzger spent about 15 hours a week each last semester gathering information about human organ plastination, meeting with Baptista and visiting the University of Michigan plastination lab. At the end of last semester, they handed Baptista a business plan.
“People have great ideas, but they’re not sure how to implement them,” Haas said. “Where we come in is putting things on paper so they can convey the feasibility of their business proposal.”
The University is currently reviewing the business plan and contemplating investing in Baptista’s idea. The plastinated organs would be used by hospitals, medical schools, veterinary schools and high schools.
“For somebody like me with absolutely no clue how to start a business plan, to have students help with this has been fantastic,” Baptista said. “The students are very knowledgeable and the advice of Dr. Sonny Ariss has been very helpful.”
Ariss, a professor of management who along with Dr. Tom Sharkey, associate professor of marketing, coordinates the entrepreneurial projects, said, “The University needs to play a role in economic development of the region and with this program, students help play a role in driving the economic development engine. We think the future of northwest Ohio is tied to the knowledge economy and breakthroughs from area universities.”
Baptista said he hopes his idea will generate revenue for the University, but he’s more excited about UT becoming known as a force in the field of plastination.
If that happens, Haas and Metzger will have played an important role while gaining valuable experience.
David Chatfield, director of the MBA program, said, “Personal contact with real inventors and entrepreneurs itself is a great learning experience. Along the way, students learn about the technology commercialization process and get a hands-on opportunity to apply it.”
Haas agreed: “As a student we get a lot from books, but with this project I’ve learned a lot about the little questions that have to be asked that can make or break a project. It’s been a great opportunity to learn and to provide a service to the University.”
Currently, several other entrepreneurial projects for MBA students are being explored inside and outside the University. In addition, Ariss and Sharkey are teaching classes focused on exploring entrepreneurial opportunities in the areas of wind, solar and ethanol energy.
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