A decade ago, when the Wharton Business Plan Competition (BPC) began, the Internet dominated discussions about entrepreneurship. That, of course, was before the bubble burst and many dot.coms were revealed to be, in the words of New Yorker writer John Cassidy, little more than dot.cons.

These days, the Internet remains a critical enabler of commerce, but no one pretends that staking out a little real estate on the web will ensure business success. Instead, student entrepreneurs who compete in the Wharton BPC have recently turned their attention to another promising arena -- healthcare, specifically biotechnology, that combination of medicine, basic science and engineering that has unraveled the human genome and, if it lives up to its promise, could deliver a raft of new treatments for a variety of diseases.

Five of the eight finalists at this year's Venture Finals -- the culminating event in the yearlong business plan competition -- offered up ideas for businesses that could help people live longer or less painful lives. They ranged from one as simple as creating better padding for the junctures between prostheses and amputees' residual limbs to one as complex as using nanoparticles -- infinitesimally small specks of matter -- to better diagnose and treat cancer.  Read More...