Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/61371
In the world's growing array of entrepreneurial competitions, students are practicing their pitches, preparing their business plans, and playing to win startup gold. O Ways of the world—are beginning to look not so much for 'busi- ness as usual' as for 'business as unusual,'" says Swangard. "They're asking, 'How do we move on, how do we adapt, plan competitions? Most likely, the fascination with entrepre- neurship itself, say educators. The startup stories generated by entrepreneurial competitions show people just what can come from a great idea and a well-conceived plan. At the same time, competitions provide an almost all-in-one edu- cational experience, where participants learn a comprehensive set of business skills, including initiative, innovation, and strategy. Moreover, such skills aren't just useful to self-employed entrepreneurs. They're also in demand among traditional companies looking for ways to set out in new directions, says Randy Swangard, director of the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business in Eugene. The Lundquist Center hosts the New Venture Championship, one of the most prominent plan competitions in the U.S. "The more traditional companies—the Kodaks and GEs petitions are often well-covered by local media, and larger intercollegiate business plan competitions are big news, receiving coverage in business and mainstream publications. What's motivating the burgeoning enthusiasm for business nce, a business plan competition may have gar- nered nothing other than a passing mention in a local newspaper and an article in the alumni mag- azine. No more. These days, single-campus com- how do we implement change?' Companies want employees who can recognize opportunity and build a plan that capi- talizes on that opportunity." With these competitions, busi- ness schools can create people who think entrepreneurially, says Swangard, not just people who are entrepreneurs. by Tricia Bisoux illustration by Nick Bertozzi From Classroom to Craze The current explosion of business plan competitions began in the early 1980s, when the concept of entrepreneurship was first making the rounds among business school students. At the time, most business school faculty and administrators still did not view entrepreneurship as a skill to be taught; they kept their focus strictly on more traditional business disciplines. "In the 1980s and even in the 1990s, put- launched by students, not faculty. In 1984, two MBA stu- dents at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business wanted to create a learning experience that taught entrepreneurship to business students in the same comprehensive way that "moot court" trials taught litigation skills to law students. Soon after, they launched MOOT CORP, the competition that is believed to have been the first official plan competition on record. MIT's $50K (for- merly $10K) at the Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, followed in 1989. Students at the Lundquist College launched its New Venture Championship in 1991. Today, there are dozens of intra- and intercollegiate ical, but there are still people at every university with an entrepreneurship program who believe that this is a flash in the pan that will eventually go away." Not surprisingly, the first competitions in the U.S. were ting on a competition like this was a radical concept," Swangard says. "Now it's not so rad- business plan competitions around the world. In fact, competitions have become so au courant that Gary Cadenhead, director of MOOT CORP, recently pub- lished the book No Longer MOOT: The Premier New Venture Competition from Idea to Global Impact. It chronicles the competition's growth from an intracam- BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2004 27