Honey Bee Rental Company Wins 2013 China Business Plan Competition

University of Maryland's Smith School of Business and Peking University's Guanghua School of Management Host 8th Annual Event

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Jan. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- MBA students with the best pitches for China businesses won $10,000 in cash prizes Tuesday from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business in the 2013 China Business Plan Competition. The annual competition is organized by the Smith School's Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and host partner, Peking University's Guanghua School of Management in Beijing. Students from the Smith School traveled to Beijing to compete with teams from five Chinese universities. Two teams from Smith's Israel partner school, the Technion Israeli Institute of Technology, also travelled to China to participate.

Smith School student Yuan He won the competition's top prize of $3,000 with his pitch for Honeymoon Honey, a plan to rent honey bees to farmers and harvest the honey to make cosmetics. The competition, now in its eighth year, was the culmination of a business plan course and study trip to China for Smith MBA students, led by the Dingman Center.

"Innovation and entrepreneurship is an important topic drawing significant attention from governments and business schools around the world. The capabilities of innovation and entrepreneurship are particularly important for China, which is undergoing a key period of overall economic transition," said Hongbin Cai, dean of Peking University's Guanghua School of Management. "Leading the edge of innovation and entrepreneurship education in business schools, the China Business Plan Competition hosted by Guanghua School of Management in collaboration with the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business manages to enhance the communication of innovative ideas and cultivate entrepreneurial practices."