Eligibility
The contest is open to all Washington State University students who are enrolled fall semester 2008. To enter the competition, a team must register for the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Business Plan Competition. Teams should include members possessing the essential background to enable the development of a serious business plan. It is recommended that teams include science or engineering qualifications as well as business expertise where appropriate. There is no limit on the number of members; however, small interdisciplinary teams are encouraged. Only four members of the team will be allowed to present their idea before the judges during the second phase of the competition. Teams may consist of graduate as well as undergraduate students. While students from other universities are welcome to participate, at least half of the team members must be WSU students. Each team member must provide documentation of participation.

Each team will do the market research and business planning for a new business venture. Projects may be initially triggered either by (1) the identification of a market need for a new or substantially improved technology-based product or service or; (2) the identification of a new technology that has promise as the basis for a new or substantially improved technology-based product or service. Regardless of the initial stimulus for the venture, each team will:

• evaluate the market potential of the product or service, including its potential for sustained profitability
• apply or develop the proposed idea or technology, and assess key feasibility issues
• develop a comprehensive business plan

Complete documentation must be submitted for each entry. Contestants may use any reference materials or consult with any other person, but it is expected that the plan will be the team's own original work.

Only plans for new ventures may be entered in the competition. Plans for new "not-for-profit" models will also be considered.

Teams must submit a one page business plan summary and a two minute video "sales pitch" of their idea to WSU SharePoint site address https://mycb.wsu.edu/businessplancompetition by Wednesday, December 9th before midnight. After registration paperwork has been processed by the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, participants will be granted access to the SharePoint site via their WSU Network ID and password.

The one page summary must be submitted in .pdf format. If you do not have a .pdf converter, you can find one on the SharePoint site. A sample one page summary can also be found on the site under “Documents”. The video sales pitch must be a .wmv, .mpeg, or .mov file; no larger than 100 mb; and no longer than two minutes. 

ALL TEAM MEMBERS MUST CERTIFY THAT ALL WORK ON THE BUSINESS PLAN IS ORIGINAL. A technology, where used, does not have to be original. That is, it need not be a new invention.

Educational Component: Contestants are strongly encouraged to register in related courses* associated with the competition.

* Entrp 485 section 1 Tu/Th 9:10-10:25 location Todd 105
* Entrp 496 section 1 Th 10:35-11:50 location Todd 105

Fall Prizes: TBA

Ownership and Disclosure
All contestants own the rights to their ideas. Contestants must properly acknowledge any trademarks or copyrighted materials of others, or licensing agreements, that are incorporated into the contestants' materials. The contestants are responsible for obtaining any necessary permission before incorporating such materials into their submissions.

Once materials are submitted, Washington State University and its Schools and Colleges reserve the right to publish information about the contestants' work in university publications and to release information to the news media.

Patenting
Where applicable, contestants may choose to file patent applications on their own or to disclose their inventions to the Washington State University Research Foundation before or after the competition.

Submission of an idea to the competition should be considered a public disclosure of the idea. (In some countries, patent applications must be filed prior to disclosure. In the U.S. inventors generally have one year after disclosure in which to file patent applications.)

Registration
Teams must register by submitting a printed version of Business Plan Competition Registration Form by October 28, 2009  to Lindsay Weber, Todd Hall 570, fax a signed copy to (509) 335-3851 or mailed to:
Washington State University 
College of Business
PO Box 644750
Pullman, WA 99164-4750

Download a copy of the Registration Form.

Throughout The Academic Year
 
As with the better business plan competitions around the country, we encourage our student participants to find better ideas to write their business plans around and many of the teams at the undergraduate and graduate level take our advice and write business plans around intellectual property owned by outside inventors, scientists, universities, national labs, corporations, etc.  Some students choose to come up with their own ideas, especially in cases where they feel very passionately about the viability of their ideas, while many students write plans based on outside intellectual property. 
 
Our rules then require that the students write their own business plans.  We do encourage the student teams to gather outside data from a variety of sources and to seek advice and feedback from outside experts.  For example, we encourage the students to solicit from these experts a review of the student's business plan where outside experts review the draft plans and offer advice.  We also encourage the students to build an advisory board for their business plan and seek the board members advice and feedback.  Many of the teams take our advice and work very hard to seek expert outside advice on their business plan, as we encourage teams to do.

Leading Up To The Competition
 
A committee; comprised of one student, one board member, one faculty member, and one staff member, sits down in front of a white board weeks before the competition and determines which teams to put into which leagues within both the undergraduate, graduate, and other divisions.  They try to spread teams around the leagues in order to achieve breadth and depth within each league, and in cases where we know there are particularly strong teams coming out of our classes (based on their graded performance in our business plan classes) we will try to separate the stronger teams out into different leagues in much the same way that strong teams are seeded in the NCAA basketball tournament.  The committee then determines as a group which judges to assign to each league, trying again to achieve breadth and depth with judges in each league.  For example, we try to have at least one legal expert, one investor, one entrepreneur, and so on, judging within each league, and we also try as best we can to link the judges domain expertise with the business plans within a league.
 
As our Business Plan Competition has evolved to include business plans written around relatively sophisticated intellectual property from individuals and entities from around the region, and as our Competition has grown in size such that it includes so many external judges from around the region, it is inevitable that there are occasionally interconnections among participants, judges, and ideas.  When these situations arise, we separate the individuals involved so that they are not judging/participating in the same leagues.  For example, we won't allow someone to judge in a league in which one of the student teams in that league is presenting a business plan that they've written around IP that we believe the judge may be connected with in some way.  Similarly, we make sure to keep donated prize money away from student winners if we think there may potentially be a link between the donor and the student.

At The Competition
 
Judges are asked to evaluate each entry based on five criteria: the strength of the team, the concept, the written plan, the presentation, and whether or not they would invest if given the opportunity.  As potential for investment is one of the stated criteria, the judges discussions definitively include whether or not to invest in each plan, and we often have judges in the room who are capable and willing to invest in plans if presented with that opportunity.  This is a key feature of the better competitions around the country and something we are trying to include more of in our Competition.
 
In terms of the actual judging in our Competition, the outside judges truly do the judging and they choose the winners.  The judges typically discuss each presentation and individually complete a ranking form immediately after each presentation, and after all of the teams in a league have finished presenting the judges will then have a summary discussion of all the teams and decide on a winner of that league, typically by individually rank ordering the teams and then aggregating their rankings.  It is clearly a one-vote-per-judge process.  There is also a room monitor (typically a faculty member and/or instructor) as well as a student assistant (student participants are not allowed to be a student assistant) in each of the rooms during the judging at all times for the Competition to insure that the sessions run on schedule, that the rules are followed, to answer questions if the judges have any, and to provide supplies as needed.