The Venture Edge

It really is a small world. As I was getting ready to post a link to the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) 150k Challenge -- which will award a total of $150,000 to winners of three different entrepreneurship competitions -- I ran across an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal. According to the article, the age-old tradition of business plan competitions is increasingly being seen by the business schools that sponsor them as an ineffective way to spark the entrepreneurial spirit. Instead of resulting in new businesses, these competitions are in most cases simply resulting in some very well-written business plans. And that's not the outcome that the schools that sponsor business plan competitions are hoping for.