Big business at Cambridge Springs

Mar. 4—There's nothing quite like the crisp feel of a brand-spanking-new $100 bill in your hand.

Ben Franklin's familiar gaze, the raised ridges of ink, the distinct blend of cotton and linen: Even for those who've held one hundreds of times, it's always nice to have a hundred in hand. And for those who haven't, well, it's not exactly priceless but it can feel that way.

It's a feeling that a team of juniors at Cambridge Springs Junior-Senior High School learned more about on Friday as a week-long exercise in free enterprise culminated with prizes and awards. Fittingly, the members of the winning company — each team designed a product for their own hypothetical company — received more than just applause, certificates and pats on the back. The 11 students also each received a $100 bill.

"I order them at the bank. I'm like, 'Can I have pretty ones? They're for the prize money,'" Stacy Batholomew said with a laugh on Wednesday inside the classroom that served as headquarters for the school's Pennsylvania Business Week event. "That's the carrot that's dangled, but really it's the competitive spirit that gets them going."

As executive director of Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System Inc., a nonprofit that has been holding Business Week events at northwestern Pennsylvania schools for more than 25 years, Bartholomew will stoke that spirit — and hand out hundreds — at 10 schools over the course of the current school year. The group will move on to Saegertown and Maplewood high schools later this month, before a hiatus in competition until the fall.

At Cambridge Springs, the 67 students that make up the junior class divided into six teams for the week, with three teams developing ideas, business strategies and marketing campaigns for new laptops and three others doing the same for cameras.

Down the hall from Bartholomew, Team Life Lens was at work in Matt Crocker's science classroom on their idea for a camera with health-related functions aimed at those who enjoy an outdoorsy lifestyle. Each team is assigned a teacher and an adviser — a volunteer with real-world experience who helps the students refine their pitch, anticipate obstacles and prepare for various presentations and competitions during the week.

Seated at a table at the front of the room, team CEO Audrey Bullock gazed at the screen in front of her. Bullock's talent for public speaking was a big part of why her teammates elected her to the top role, and she was thinking about the presentation she would lead on the final day of the competition.

"I think it's a great opportunity for us during Business Week and for our futures," Bullock said, "and it's also giving us experience in leadership."

Nearby, Raegan Higgins, the team's vice president of manufacturing, worked on cardboard mockups of the team's camera concepts at a table covered with preliminary sketches.

"It's a way to get my hands on things," Higgins said of the week devoted to product development and business exploration. "It gives me an excuse to just be creative all day."

In the back of the room, information technology manager Owen Riley and manufacturing assistant Bennett Carico were working on a model of the combination drone-mobile tripod device for use when customers' active lifestyles took them rock climbing, for instance.

The lifestyle angle was central to the group's approach to the question of how to attract customers to a new product in an already crowded product line. With that in mind, their concept incorporated a kinetic battery — a battery with its own magnet-containing generator. The user's movement shakes the magnets, creating energy to fuel the camera — and to prevent the heartbreak of discovering a dead camera battery just as you're about to use the drone to document an Instagram-able moment on your way up a rock face.

Pointing to where the back of the tiny camera would have a touch screen for easy controls, Higgins said that young, active people weren't the only potential customers.

The company was targeting older people as well, Bullock explained, by working on a health scan feature that would make it appealing even if the owner were less active.

Like the asking price for the hypothetical product, the final features were still under development.

Which was part of the point: No actual products were being produced, of course. What was being produced was active learners.

Looking on from the front of the classroom, Crocker said the week allowed teachers like him the chance to play the role of the "guide on the side," offering assistance as the students took the lead.

"I've always liked projects that let kids get their hands dirty, dig in and kind of learn on the fly," Crocker said. "To see it in a week-long process like this, it's great to see them take control and take the lead. They do a lot of the learning with just a little bit of guidance on the side."

The hands-on result, according to Riley and Carico, was fun.

"There's more free time to actually explore and learn and be creative with your own stuff," Carico said.

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.