| Abstrakt: |
The aim of this paper is to conduct an exploratory study based on judges' scoring sheets obtained from a business plan competition organized in the Northeast region of the United States. A review of the literature shows that business plan development and business plan competitions are an important part of entrepreneurship education, focusing students on major constructs needed to develop a business. However, most of the research conducted seems to be aimed toward what can be learned in crafting a business plan, or what elements should be included, and how to present/pitch the plan to potential investors. That being said, we were not able to find recent studies focusing on what judges think about the plan they reviewed. Hence, we aim to address this gap in the research, as receiving feedback from the judges may be a valuable source of information in order to help students in focusing their effort on the section(s) that seemed to be the most critical to the judges. Not only can that information be used to enhance entrepreneurship education, it can also be a way to strengthen AACSB's "closing the loop" assessment requirement. Judges scored the business plans on seven criteria: Market opportunity, Competitive Advantage, Management Capability, Financial Understanding, Venture Maturity, Presentation, and Investment potential. We found that students performed at various levels across these criteria, performing best on the Presentation rubric and worst on Financial Understanding and Venture Maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
