Five teams of MBA students from U.S. universities are in the running for the $100,000 grand prize, the largest such prize of its kind in the world. Graduate school teams from Georgia, Michigan, and Chicago will join the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Texas at Austin, in head-to-head competition in the final round Saturday afternoon.

The finalists’ and their business plans are:

AutoShop Inc., from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, offers “tween” shopping boys aged 5 to 12 an opportunity in which they select, customize and assemble their own racing car toy and run it on a racetrack located at the store.

Aqua Vitae Enterprises, from the University of Georgia has created a patented compound to lower the mortality rate of ornamental fish. The team aims to market the Aqua Vitae product to cut down on the estimated 180 million ornamental fish a year, -- worth more than $615 million -- that die from the stress of transporting them or changing the fish tank water.

Xoran, from the University of Michigan, with its pioneering “MiniCat” scanner seeks to bring to market small, inexpensive scanners for in house use by medical specialty practices.

Roving Planet, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, has designed a system that will operate a number of applications to thousands of customers simultaneously.

Private Concepts, from the University of Texas at Austin, has developed a series of home-based health products for women, the first of which is a self-administered cervical cancer screen.

Eds: Throughout the competition, high-resolution photos suitable for publication will be available. The site will, by midnight Saturday, include the pictures of the winning teams. The web site is: http://www.bus.utexas.edu/news/mootcorp2002/