Business plan competitions: Changing attitudes in North Central Indiana

One of the main advantages of WIRED involves the flexibility of using federal funds to leverage additional investments with new ideas. In North Central Indiana, we used WIRED funds to identify and strengthen entrepreneurship skills through business plan competitions. 

Business plan competitions are one of the best ways to raise the profile of entrepreneurship within a region. We could not used WIRED funds for prize money, so we turned to our state economic development folks for help. They lined up the support we needed to develop a successful competition. 

You can read more about our competition here. 

If you are interested in the background information on our approach, please contact Pat Bacon at the Indiana Venture Center. 

Here are some examples of other business plan competitions around the country: 

• Mississippi State University
  
• UC Berkeley
  
• Rice University
  
• Northwest Venture Championship