UPEI business students take bioscience to market

Over the past few months, over 120 third-year marketing students at UPEI’s School of Business have been learning first-hand the business of bioscience. Working with six local bioscience companies, 25 teams of business students have been designing winning marketing strategies for the companies’ products and services, to be used in their national and international promotion and sales activities.

Course instructor Kent Hudson approached the PEI BioAlliance in the fall of 2007 about the possibility of engaging local companies and UPEI business students in a project that would give the students real life, real product and real marketing experience in this growing economic sector for PEI. “This is a tremendous opportunity for our students to experience first hand the bioscience industry and the real issues and opportunities in this global market. We really appreciate the time and effort put forth by the businesses sharing essential information with the students.”

Roberta MacDonald, Dean of the UPEI School of Business, says, “We recognize the benefits of reinforcing the classroom experience with practical hands-on learning. It is exciting for our students to meet and work with local entrepreneurs.”

Garth Greenham is COO of First Venture Technologies, an early-stage PEI company that has developed a yeast that produces wines with a reduced level of a naturally-occurring carcinogen, ethyl carbamate. He says the students really had a taste of the complexity of some of the marketing challenges facing new products. “As a company, we’re going to need bright minds in business and science to be successful. This is a great way of building students’ awareness and excitement about what’s going on here in PEI.”

Rory Francis, Executive Director of the Prince Edward Island BioAlliance, says the interest and response from students and companies is so positive that the BioAlliance would like this to become an ongoing part of the UPEI business curriculum. He acknowledged the National Research Council Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program’s (NRC-IRAP) support to the BioAlliance in carrying out this and other initiatives that help grow small and medium sized bioscience enterprises in PEI.

“We were very pleased with the eagerness of our bioscience business community to work with the students,” said Francis. “These 125 students are now intimately aware of the exciting business opportunities--and marketing challenges--confronting bioscience companies in PEI. And these students are only a few years away from being these firms’ future recruits.”

Adelee MacNevin, a member of the winning team’s strategy, indicated, “It was a fantastic project that provided real-world experience, which can be much more complicated than textbook scenarios. The project as a whole had more value and meaning, because our suggestions could have a tangible effect.”

Awards were presented for the Best Marketing Strategy for each of the six companies’ products, and to overall winners, at a reception held on the UPEI Campus today. The overall winning team included: Jeremiah Blacquiere, Asher Fredricks, Susan Frizzell, Jessica Gillis and Adelee MacNevin, who won top honours for their marketing strategy for Fortius Pharmedica’s whey protein nutraceutical drink mix.

Participating companies for this first annual UPEI School of Business/BioAlliance Marketing Strategy Competition included: BioVectra Inc., Chemaphor Inc., First Venture Technologies, Ark Biomedical, Fortius Pharmedica and Maritime Pulse Drying.

The Prince Edward Island BioAlliance is the cluster of individuals and organizations dedicated to building the bioscience-based economic sector in PEI, with an emphasis on collaborative initiatives in research, business, education and supporting infrastructure.