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Archive for November, 2009

Vivek Wadhwa on Business School Entrepreneurs

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

There is a great article on TechCrunch titled Winner’s Curse: Why Losing a B-School Biz Plan Competition Is Better Than Winning by Vivek Wadhwa, entrepreneur turned academic, Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Its about elevator pitching, competitions for graduate business school entrepreneurs and the differentiation between good ideas and unrealistic expectation or bad execution.

Vivek argues that the winners of these business school entrepreneurship competitions never end up as the bright star companies of the real business world. Why? Because the students lack the necessary detailed technical industry knowledge that incorporates into their analysis, details that they need to push that idea through to its potential commercial realisation. They generally win the competition, receive an injection of money and have little chance against the forces of the real world due to lack of that real world experience. In fact, the people judging such competitions are usually generalists with little idea about the technical realities of the pitches they judge.

In the end, Vivek argues, its better to enter these business school competitions and not win because the winning may not be the stimulus that the young entrepreneur really needs at that point of an idea or career. I particularly like these points made in the article:

Business plan competitions don’t breed winning businesses. Rather than winning a beauty contest, building a business is a marathon that requires steady and constant effort, surmounting regular difficulties, and living through emotional peaks and valleys.Vivek Wadhwa

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Steven Clark Steven Clark - the stand up guy on this site

My name is Steven Clark (aka nortypig) and my passions are business, web development, photography and writing. My current CV [PDF 775KB] is available for download. Currently I'm completing my 2 final units of a post-graduate university degree of MBA (Journalism and Media Studies) at the University of Tasmania.

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Light Science and Magic by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua - cover

The time has come for me to get more involved in upping my technical photography skills if I hope to embark on a Master of Fine Art and Design (Photography) next year. To that end my first book is the highly recommended Light Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting (Third Edition) by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua. What really differentiates this book is the comprehensive set of exercises and the detailed explanation of the underlying science of light in the real world that encompasses the reader's journey.