- Students don't have that much time - just creating a business plan and convincing presentation/pitch was hard enough for most groups at our school. Actually funding an idea and executing is much harder and more time consuming, especially if you're taking a lot of credit hours.
- With our business plan competition, we would start out with a large number of interested students and that number would drop with each meeting. I'm not sure how many students would be able to manage (or have interest) in pursuing their business until the end of the competition.
- This would only work for certain businesses and eliminate ones that require research or a significant time investment. When I took part in the competition, we were competing with a group working on a medical product that will hopefully save lives one day. They were at the very early stages of their prototype after having researched the principles behind it for a couple of years. They won the competition and I think(hope?) used the funds for their business.
- I assume it would also be harder to judge, as different businesses have different measures of success (based on revenue, # of customers, etc.)
All that said I do wish students would actively pursue a business to learn the ins and outs of it through active involvement. I just don't think it's feasible to do it through a competition. Maybe the whole entrepreneurship club could work on a business together though? Or find a struggling local business and help them - that would be an immense learning experience in itself (I wish there was a class that did that).