Hosted by The Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurial Performance & Economics
3 - 4 June 2011
Competition Guidelines & Submission
COMPETITION GUIDELINES:
The European Busienss Plan of the Year Competition is by invitation only. Schools who are interested in taking part, please contact somebpyc2011@cranfield.ac.uk. Each partipating school can send one team to the competition. Each team can have up to five team members (postgraduate students only).
European Business Plan of the Year Competition - Elevator Pitches
Each team will start with an elevator pitch to the full panel of jury members. Each team will have a maximum of three minutes to present the business plan. The pitches must be made without any PowerPoint presentation. There will be no questions from the judges.
European Business Plan of the Year Competition - Semifinals
Each team has 30 minutes to present their plan and field questions in the afternoon of the first day. The presentation of the plan should not take more than 15 minutes. The remaining 15 minutes will be reserved for questions from the judges. 5 minutes are available for change of teams and setup. Please note that time limits will be strictly enforced.
European Business Plan of the Year Competition - Finals
Finalist presentations and question and answer sessions should not take more than 30 minutes. Again, presentations should not be longer than 15 minutes of this time with up to 15 minutes for questions for judges. The final will take place during the morning of the Saturday. All presentations must be made in English. The presentations will be made in a lecture style theatre seating. Guest, press and students will be invited to attend the presentations.
The following audio-visual equipment will be made available for your use:
- Beamer
- Desktop computer
- Loudspeakers
- Overhead projector
- Flip charts
If you have any extra audio-visual requirements, please send an email to somebpyc2011@cranfield.ac.uk. The final order of presentations will be communicated to the teams on arrival at Cranfield School of Management. Competing teams may watch other teams’ presentations, but they must leave the room for the question and answer sessions until they have made their own presentations in their stream. Finalists may not observe the questions of the other finalists until they have presented themselves. Regarding the elevator pitches, students can attend all presentations. Representatives of the press will be in attendance at the competition to give it maximum visibility. Teams should inform the organisers in the case of any issues of confidentiality.
JUDGING RULES:
In the first day’s scoring the elevator pitch will count for 15%, the written business plan for 50% and the presentation of the full plan for 35%. In the finals, the plans will be judged ‘as if by professional investors’, for which a guideline is 35% weight for the written plan and 65% for the presentation. For more information on the judging criteria for the elevator pitches, business plan presentations and written business plans, please click here.
BUSINESS PLAN SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Written business plans will be submitted to the judges in advance of the competition. Judges participating only in the final round will receive executive summaries of the plans also in advance of the competition. Abstracts of the plans will be included in the competition brochure. It is important that the following deadlines for submission of all these items are strictly followed by the teams to ensure that all plan are correctly included in the competition process. Please careful follow the guidelines below.
The text of the business plan should not exceed 30 typed pages and the entire document, including text and exhibits should not exceed 40 pages in length. The plan must be written in English. There is no single format that should be followed, as long as all the pertinent areas are adequately covered. Please e-mail an abstract of your plan and a one-line descriptor as a PDF document before the 16 May 2011 to somebpyc2011@cranfield.ac.uk.
The abstract page should be no more than 150-200 words long and must include the following in the order given below:
- Title of plan
- Full name of participating school
- Full names of team members
- Email contact details for each team member
- Abstract of plan
- One line descriptor
- Faculty contacts - full name and title
- Full address of institution
- Full phone number, fax number and email details for faculty member
The descriptor should be a short sentence about your business. The competition brochure of abstracts will be provided to all competition attendees.
By 16 May 2011 all teams have to submit their executive summary (max 3 pages) and a full copy of their business plan (max 40 pages) as a PDF document to somebpyc2011@cranfield.ac.uk.