Business plans competitions

The third investment. Scalable Systems (http //www.scalablesys. com/), came to Incubators Work via the incubator s internal business plan competition, which was started in 2000. The competition was open to any venture that had at least one person presently on the staff of an ST company, and the prize for the winner was guaranteed seed funding of S 500,000 from Incubators Work if the business was launched. The competition regularly attracted 15-20 entries per year, but Scalable Systems was the first entrant that ended up in the Incubators Work portfolio. Thia comments ... 

Business plan competitions are now a weU-proven tool for surfacing ideas for new businesses in both a regional and a corporate context (Fig. 9.3). In one American life sciences company, for example, 1000 ideas were generated. These were turned into 100 business plans, of which 56 received seed funding. In a business plan competition, participants develop a fuUy-fledged business plan, usually in three phases from the initial description of the business idea to concrete details such as the appointment of the management team and a financial plan (Fig. 9.4). 

Fig. 9.4 Key phases of business plan competitions Source McKinsey...

Dr. Jun has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers and filed 7 patents. Dr. Jun has been recognized by various awards including the Early Career Award from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation in 2007, the Innovation Award from the American Diabetes Association in 2009, and the Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation in 2010, Dean s Award for Excellence in Mentorship in 2010, Finalist of Alabama Launchpad Governor s Business Plan Competition, and Wallace H. Coulter FeUow in 2011. 

Vu, S., Keynote Presentation, George Washington University Business Plan Competition, 2013, http //www.youtube.com/watch v=X05buwQQ-Rw, accessed on March 1,2014. 

Fig. 9.3 Busi ness plan competition - a proven tool for surfacing and developing concepts Source McKinsey...

There were no caveats or warnings in either case that the users were dealing with test data, or "naked numbers," and betatest software. Some of the users of the beta versions of the expert systems turned out to be companies regulated by EPA. Third, the potential existed for any one of the users to capture the data and use it in a permit application proceeding or as part of the defense against an enforcement action. In the private sector, these risks would be equal to sending key chapters of your company s business plan to the competition. 

Resources—A process is established that provides for a business strategy to develop long and short range business plans in order to allocate resources consistent with the objective of OE. Customer Eocus—It is important to provide high quality products and/or services to customers within a reasonable time, at a competitive cost and meeting OE objectives. This is achieved through processes that clearly identify customers, evaluate customer requirements, and monitor customer satisfaction in order to improve. 

With the opening of the transmission network to all resource suppliers, many marketing entities entered the game in the mid-1990s. Many of these marketers are subsidiaries of already established gas suppliers. Some have been created solely for the electric industry. Still others have been formed from the utilities themselves. All of these etitities arc competition-motivated. Facility planning and reliability issues, while important to their business, are left to other organizations. 

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