Albers-SJIM Virtual Competition

Last Year's SU Winners: Pictured (from left to right): Keisha Lugito, Kyle Yoo, and Anne Transier

Read about their experience on our blog!

Virtual Business Plan Competition

Students from Albers collaborate with university students from St. Joseph’s in Bangalore, India to create a business solution for a pressing social problem. Teams made of students from both schools connect on virtual platforms to consider the causes, effects, and possible solutions of global issues.

• 2019 Topic: Food Insecurity
• 2018 Topic: Combatting Fake News
• 2017 Topic: Bringing Recycling to Bangalore, India

Entry Deadline & Key Dates

The deadline to sign up to participate in the 2019 competition is October 15, 2019.

• Oct. 15, 2019 - Register online
• Nov. 25, 2019 - Submit for First Round
• Jan. 25, 2020 - Final 3 Teams Present in Finals

Check out the full details at St. Joseph's Institute of Management's B-Plan Competition

Schedule

Competition Demands

While this competition is co-hosted by St. Joseph’s Institute of Management (SJIM, India) and the Albers School of Business and Economics (Seattle University, USA), the students of all courses/departments/programs/schools at Seattle University and of the St. Joseph’s group of institutions are eligible to join.

The only infrastructure you need is a data connection! After registration, all students will be assigned to teams. Ideally, each team will comprise of a minimum of two students from each country. However, team sizes might vary based on the number of registrations. All students will be given SJIM email addresses and access to SJIM’s online educational infrastructure, and may use these and other apps to collaborate with their team members.

Submission Guide

Each team has about a month to formulate a 7-10 page business plan, and so the demand on each individual’s time may be 1-2 hours a week, over a four week period.

For the first round, (due 25 November 2019) the business plan should be submitted in a doc/docx/pdf format. All submissions will be passed through anti-plagiarism software. The document should use Times New Roman 12-point font with 1-inch margins all round. The length of the document must be a maximum of 10 pages, excluding any appendices. Judges will read, but not evaluate, any appendices. The required structure of the business plan is below.

• Cover page, which includes the name of the proposed company and the names of the team members.
• The Idea: one page dedicated to explaining the idea (or your solution) in brief.
• The People: The men and women who will be starting and running the venture, their roles, details about any outside parties providing key services or important resources, and so on.
• The Opportunity: A profile of the business itself – what it will sell and to whom, whether the business can grow and how fast, what its economics are, who and what stand in the way of success.
• The Context: The bigger picture – the regulatory environment, demographic trends, technological trends and developments, and any other factor that will inevitably change but cannot be controlled by you (the entrepreneur). How will you be prepared to deal with the inevitable change in the environment?
• Risk and Reward: An assessment of everything that can go wrong and right, and a discussion of how the entrepreneurial team can respond.
• Appendices, if any.

The structure listed above is adapted from an article by William Sahlman, Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration (Emeritus) at Harvard Business School. All teams are highly encouraged to read this short article about writing a business plan.

For the ;final round, the business plan should be submitted in a PowerPoint (.ppt/.pptx) format. The structure of the presentation will follow the broad structure of the written plan. Each team will have 15 minutes to present their plan. After all teams have presented their plan, the judges will give each team a set of questions to answer. All teams will get 10 minutes to discuss between themselves, including with the overseas team members via the internet. Thereafter, the teams will have to give their answers to the judges.