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
