Business

Best Business Plan Competitions For Entrepreneurs

Published

6 years ago

September 9, 2020

As an entrepreneur, sometimes it may seem like your idea is everything. After all, without your ingenious idea, there is no company to build. Yet, there are many steps to take in order to develop that idea. Having a strong business plan is a must.

Through the research and writing it requires, the plan takes what was initially nothing but an innovative idea and makes it into a possibility. It helps you lay out every conceivable aspect of your business, including the executive summary, a company and team description, the copyrights involved, your market research, and the business’ financial plan.

Each section allows the reader to get to know your business, its profitability, expenses, and market impact. They also help you and your team to keep track of the company’s growth through the weeks, months, and years.

In any startup business plan that you may download from the best business templates site, the most important function is its ability to attract funding, and not simply through loans, investors, or credit unions. A strong business plan can bring your company independent capital through business plan competitions, a well-capitalized but underutilized resource for entrepreneurs.

The competitions usually consist of elaborating on your business idea in a concise business plan, a pitch deck presentation, and (often) a display of the company’s product or service. The presentation is done in front of an acclaimed panel of judges formed by local industry leaders, other investors, or entrepreneurs.

The panel judges your presentation based on the competition’s specific criteria and performance metrics. On some occasions, like during the 2005 Rice University Business-Plan Competition, the venture capitalists present can offer the participants even more than the original prize.

You can find business plan competitions focused on a variety of markets. Some are focused on a single industry, some are specifically for college startups, and others are open to anyone with a great marketing and financial plan. Here is a list of five competitions you could apply to.

tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition

For over two decades the Northeastern Pennsylvania based organization now known as tecBRIDGE has made an effort to promote technology-based economic development, entrepreneurship, and innovation in its region.

Since 2002, the tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition has been a platform for their mission. The competition is divided into collegiate and non-collegiate divisions. Non-collegiate participants must have gross revenue of $250k or lower since the founding of the business. They must also submit a plan which identifies commercial solutions for technical products or services. Team registration deadlines for the annual competition are due in February.

Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

For 10 years, Penn GSE and the Milken Family Foundation have joined forces to help kickstart educational businesses. The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition allows educational entrepreneurship ventures from around the world to present their plans in front of a panel of industry experts.

The ventures can address any educational issue, from workforce learning to early childhood education to special education, but they may not have raised nor earned more than $500k in gross revenue since their legal foundation.

Besides the usual sections of a business plan, the competition’s application includes the submission of a digital slide deck presentation with a maximum of 15 slides and a 60-second video pitch. The annual competition is a great platform for potential funding and for great networking.

Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition

In 2001, German professor Günter Faltin started the Entrepreneurship Foundation with the goal of helping people of all ages around the world to create sustainable businesses. The foundation’s Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition is meant to encourage business owners and innovators around the world to do just that.

Their venture, project, or idea must have some sort of societal impact which affects one or more of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs include poverty, world hunger, health and well-being, quality education, responsible consumption and production, and development of industry, innovation, and infrastructure.

The competition is divided into a Youth section for those between the ages of 13 and 29. The Adult Citizen Entrepreneurship category serves applicants who are 30 years old and older.

Get in the Ring

Frustrated by the number of startups they saw fail every year because of funding and resource needs, the technology scouting company Unknown Group created Get in the Ring. The group’s goal is to give these ventures the tools they need to thrive, and they do so through three platforms—a competition, a challenge, and a global meetup.

The annual competition, which began in 2012, invites entrepreneurs with ventures that contribute to the solving of today’s grand challenges. It is divided into five competitions that meet different needs—clean energy, food and agriculture, health, workforce augmentation, and impact (which focuses on the SDGs).

The winners of the competition are welcomed to the global meetup, a three-day retreat where startups from 150 countries present their innovations to hundreds of investors, industry experts, and other business owners.

Rice Business Plan Competition

For 20 years, Rice University’s competition has given collegiate entrepreneurs a chance to get real-world experience and opportunities in business launching. Only two of the team members need to be Rice students and another member must be a graduate-level student. The competition is aimed at businesses in the sectors of energy and sustainability, science, technology, and other innovation.

The application consists of a 20-question survey and the submission of a two to five-page executive summary. Participants are encouraged to add a 60 to 120-second video pitch. Only 42 of the hundreds of annual applicants get a chance to participate in the competition, where a group of 200 judges made up of industry leaders, venture capitalists and national investors choose worthy winners.

Last year, more than seven teams won awards of $100,000 or more.

Choose the right competition for your business, prepare your plan, and pitch for when the deadlines open and get ready to compete.

Business

Ipsos Helps Brands Understand How They Get Customer Experience Wrong & Why It’s Costing Them Millions

Published

4 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Matthew Wiles

For brands looking to succeed in the modern business ecosystem, the customer experience (CX) is not something companies can afford to ignore. CX is a direct driver of revenue, loyalty, and growth for organizations.

Ipsos, one of the world’s leading market research firms, helps brands understand that failing to focus on the customer experience can lead to lost sales, which in turn can translate to not only millions in lost revenue but also lost trust and credibility in the market.

How brands still get CX wrong

“The customer decision and desire to do business with brands directly affect the bottom line,” says Brad Christian, Chief Commercial Officer at Ipsos – Experience Practice.

Customer experience may sound like a simple concept, but many brands still get it wrong. CX goes beyond surveys and feedback. Leaders who fail to connect feedback in a meaningful way to goals such as retention, repeat visits or purchases, advocacy, and operational performance fail to deliver on their service promises. The emotional and functional disconnect can spell trouble for brands. The most polished advertising campaigns cannot make up for a frustrating customer interaction or a promise that a business cannot fulfill.

According to Ipsos’s internal research, many customers today see service as too automated and impersonal. More than half report that their experience is worse than promised.

These findings don’t just result in disappointed buyers. They result in lost customers, negative feedback, and a long-term impact on the business as a whole.

“Brands have to manage the entire customer experience across each and every touchpoint,” explains Christian.

Poor CX can be expensive

Executives can often underestimate how expensive a history of poor CX can be. Global losses can reach into the billions while leaders wonder what went wrong. In an age of rapid social media communication, a single negative interaction can spell disaster for a company, leading to reduced customer spending or the entire loss of its most loyal customers.

Those losses are not just reflected in lost revenue, however. Customer acquisition and marketing dollars can also be lost as companies continue to spend money trying to retain their customer base, often skipping right over the experience part of retention.

Poor customer experience can be a deep operating problem that creates a domino effect, decimating businesses from the inside out. These poor experiences can impact not only present and future customer acquisition but also business leaders and employees.

CX matters more in today’s business landscape

The customer experience has always mattered, but it may matter more to brands trying to make it in a modern, ultra-competitive, digitally-driven business landscape. Good experiences encourage repeat purchases, boost loyalty, and increase the likelihood that customers will go online and recommend a brand to others.

“Customer experience isn’t an isolated function,” says Christian. “It’s ‌part of a larger system that ensures that brands measure and manage customer experience data and then act on that data to drive action where customer experience gaps exist.”

Brands also have to seek to understand today’s customers, who expect experiences that are seamless, authentic, and relevant. As more and more companies hop on the automation train, they will want to reassure their customers that the human element that many people consider important still exists.

At Ipsos, six drivers of strong customer relationships form the bedrock of the company’s CX platform, something that they refer to as the “Forces of CX”: certainty, fair treatment, control, status, belonging, and enjoyment.

Customers want to feel that if they have an issue with a brand, it will be handled and that their concerns will be understood. They don’t want the customer experience to feel like a battleground; they want it to feel fair and human.

“Customer experience isn’t just a nicer experience,” says Christian. “It ties directly to specific financial outcomes, whether that be increased sales, greater market share, or stronger brand loyalty.”

How Ipsos helps businesses deliver customer experiences that matter

Ipsos turns customer feedback into reliable, actionable, decision-ready information. The company goes beyond simple satisfaction metrics and implements voice-of-the-customer programs, journey analytics, relationship feedback, and quality research.

“Brands don’t just need data,” Christian says. “They need measurements as to how they are delivering on their brand promise and predictive modeling to tie financial performance measures to those measures to help them determine where to invest to maximize the customer experience and understand what financial impact those investments might deliver for the business.”

Ipsos measures the interactions that matter ‌most and shows brands how each interaction can affect retention, share of spend, and efficiency. For brands that are trying to reduce the guesswork behind CX, Ipsos helps them move beyond cosmetic fixes to achieve real, meaningful change.

Customer expectations can shift on a dime, influenced by society, social media, and even changing trends. Ipsos helps brands meet those rapidly changing customer expectations with hard evidence and comprehensive metrics.

Today’s brands need to understand how to get the customer experience right. Ipsos has the insights needed to drive home the deep importance of CX in today’s marketplace.