Business Opportunities Weblog

Business Plan Competitions Revamped

By on February 3, 2013 in News

Business Plan

I’m glad to see that some business plan competitions are focusing more on the business and less on the plan.

WSJ:

Less planning, more legwork. That’s the formula some business schools are using to overhaul the competitions they conduct each year to test their students’ mettle as entrepreneurs.

The contests, which have been an academic rite of passage for decades, typically involve teams of students submitting written business plans, then following up with a short presentation to a panel of judges. The winner might receive a cash prize of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars and even the chance to mingle with potential investors.

But most of the business plans emerging from these competitions never become full-fledged businesses. Critics say that’s because the competitions don’t encourage budding entrepreneurs, they just reward a well-written plan.

“You can write a beautiful 50-page business plan without ever talking to a potential customer,” says Janet Strimaitis, managing director of Babson College’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship. So, the Wellesley, Mass., school is launching a new competition this spring that emphasizes action over ideas.

Photo by Velychko/ShutterStock.

business plan competitions

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,208 posts to the site.

Another Idea: How to Start a Business Plan Consultant Business

  • Lance

    Other than starting a new franchise or larger size corporation, I’ve always considered that to be the best way to effectively grow a new business, especially a start from scratch small business. Get out there, get going and start pitching and selling your product or service right away. Create, modify and adapt your plan as required as you go along. Seems more realistic to me, the plan could seem perfect on paper but if it stumbles or fails when put into action, what then?…..modify & adapt of course, which could have been accomplished far sooner if the action were started before spending countless hours on the plan.

  • http://www.business-opportunities.biz Dane Carlson

    the plan could seem perfect on paper but if it stumbles or fails when put into action, what then?…..modify & adapt of course,

    Excellent point Lance. You don’t have a business until you have a product or service that people will actually buy.

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