ASU student-created Green Taxi Cab may not have come away with the gold at a recent business plan competition, but they earned a little green.
ASU was one of eight universities across the nation to present environmentally friendly business plans to Wal-Mart, hoping to win a $20,000 grand prize on Friday.
Supply chain management senior Andrew Nelson, management junior Calvin Bovee, nonprofit management and leadership junior Jenna Schaefer and journalism junior Jonathan Cooper — a former State Press writer — brought Arizona's first all-hybrid taxicab service, Green Taxi Cab, to Bentonville, Ark., last Friday to compete in Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s first Better Living Business Plan Challenge.
The competition provided students around the world an opportunity to showcase their innovative sustainable products in front of a panel of judges.
The Wal-Mart executives, government officials and environmental organization representatives who sat on the panel selected the University of Michigan's business plan, Mozergy, as the grand-prize winner.
Mozergy, a biodiesel company, produced a non-food-based renewable fuel while supporting sustainable development in Africa.
Stanford University received second place, and a $10,000 grant.
Though Green Taxi Cab wasn't one of the two prizewinners, they were still awarded $1,000 for participating in the competition and received praise for their work from Wal-Mart executives, Nelson said.
"I feel like we did really well," Nelson said about the team's performance. "We had senior level VPs give us feedback on our business ideas and they had a lot of really positive things to say about it."
ASU's Green Taxi Cab team was the only undergraduate team to participate in the competition, Nelson said. The rest of the teams were either master's of business administration students or teams of students who were working on their doctorates.
"A lot of the judges were surprised that we were a team made up of undergraduates," Nelson said. "It felt really good to know that, as undergraduates, we could take our idea and it was worthy to compete against other teams on a national level."
Jay Golden, assistant professor at the School of Sustainability and directory of the National Center of Excellence for SMART Innovations, also said the judges were amazed that the ASU students were undergraduates.
"[The judges] specifically indicated that the ASU team had the best presentation and were the best prepared in responding to very difficult questioning," Golden said in an e-mail.
Golden has been the coach for the students who created Green Taxi Cab since the idea was conceived, and the team won an Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative grant last year. He said he has enjoyed working with the team to mentor and help their businesses succeed.
"I have been very honored to work with this team and can only say that they represent what we all want from our students," Golden said. "We should take great pride in them."
Reach the reporter at: ryan.calhoun@asu.edu.
