Traditional business plans increasingly are viewed as anachronisms in today's entrepreneurial environment, spurring UVA's Darden School of Business to launch a bold experiment to re-envision the school's traditional business plan competitions. Rooted in scholarship of Darden's Batten Institute that concentrates on principles of design thinking and effectuation, Darden has added a new event to its calendar, a De-risking Challenge, while evolving its "plan" competition and adding a design-based methodology into its "concept" competition. This panel explores the thinking behind that innovation and practical issues involved in implementing new, non-traditional competitions. Philippe Sommer will be joined by Craig Forest from Georgia Tech and Elana Fine from the University of Maryland, each of whom will discuss their school’s approach to business plan competitions, including the implications for business education of this new mode of competitive expression.
