Instead of a business plan competition, how about a competition where students must create and refine a value proposition and launch a real product or service (alpha version). The new ventures in the competition can be judged based on a range of tangible criteria, such as (a) how many customers have agreed to trial the product, (b) what kind of feedback have customers provided, (c) how much revenue has been generated, etc. I think such a competition would provide much more value to students than a traditional business plan competition, in part because it would force students to not only formulate a venture idea but also execute and test the idea with real customers.
From my personal experiences, I don't think that would work as well for a few of reasons:
- Students don't have that much time - just creating a business plan and convincing presentation/pitch was hard enough for most groups at our school. Actually funding an idea and executing is much harder and more time consuming, especially if you're taking a lot of credit hours.
- With our business plan competition, we would start out with a large number of interested students and that number would drop with each meeting. I'm not sure how many students would be able to manage (or have interest) in pursuing their business until the end of the competition.
- This would only work for certain businesses and eliminate ones that require research or a significant time investment. When I took part in the competition, we were competing with a group working on a medical product that will hopefully save lives one day. They were at the very early stages of their prototype after having researched the principles behind it for a couple of years. They won the competition and I think(hope?) used the funds for their business.
- I assume it would also be harder to judge, as different businesses have different measures of success (based on revenue, # of customers, etc.)
All that said I do wish students would actively pursue a business to learn the ins and outs of it through active involvement. I just don't think it's feasible to do it through a competition. Maybe the whole entrepreneurship club could work on a business together though? Or find a struggling local business and help them - that would be an immense learning experience in itself (I wish there was a class that did that).
