Organization:Business Model Competition

The Business Model Competition(BMC), or International Business Model Competition(IBMC), is an unique business development competition that differentiates itself from other business plan competitions by stressing the value of validation with real customers.

Overview

By recognizing over 85 percent of new business fall within a few years, often because they try to plan their way to success, The IBMC represents a radical departure from the past and the crest of a new paradigm in entrepreneurship. The IBMC is not a business plan competition. It doesn't reward the student for doing lots of library research, drawing fancy graphs, or crafting the perfect sales pitch to venture capitalists. Instead the IBMC want the students to:

1. breaking down their idea into the key business model assumptions.
2. getting outside the building and testing their assumptions with customers.
3. applying Customer Development/Lean Startup principles to make sure they nail the pain and solution, and,
4. learning to pivot(change) until they have arrived at a customer-validated business model.

Ultimately IBMC believes this will dramatically improve the success rate of new ventures.

Business Model Canvas

Business Model Canvas is one of the key tool that IBMC recommends the competing teams use. It is a strategic management template for developing new or documenting existing business models. The canvas consists of nine business model building blocks, which can be organized into four categories: Infrastructure, Offering, Customers,and Finances. By using a visual approach to design business model, Business Model Canvas makes it easier for firms to align their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs.

Business Model Canvas

IBMC Sponsors & Founders

The IBMC is sponsored by the Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology in the Marriot School of Management at Brigham Young University. The competition was founded by:

• Nathan Furr (Ph.D., Stanford; Entrepreneurship Professor, BYU)
• Steve Blank (Entrepreneurship Professor, UC Berkley; Lecturer, Stanford)
• John Richards (Entrepreneurship Professor, BYU)
• Scott Petersen (Director, Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, BYU)

Purpose

Seeing many new businesses fails in the first a few years, IBMC wants to dramatically improve the success rate by bringing a very different perspective to entrepreneurship. Instead of asking its participants to research existing business models, or craft a perfect sales pitch, IBMC focus on the process of developing and validating the perfect business models by encouraging its participants to identify and clarify the assumption in the model. IBMC believes that entrepreneurship should not be similar to managing a corporation, since the problems they are facing and the dynamics are very different. As the first international competition of its kind and open to all students, IBMC ultimately wants to change the way currently entrepreneurship is being taught, and bring our attention to the importance of validating assumptions.

Distinct Differences From Other Offerings

The IBMC, unlike other business competitions, stresses the process of developing an validated business model. It doesn't care how advanced the product is, or how big the market can be. Instead, it wants its participants to identify and validate the underlying assumptions. The competition will eventually be judged on the development process and final business model.

In short, IBMC emphasizes these three key steps:

1. Identify the assumptions
2. Test the assumptions with real customers
3. Pivot and tell the story

Impact Achieved For Students and Campus

The IBMC helps the students and campus in many different ways. First, the competition encourage the students to explore entrepreneurship. With the advises and critiques given in the competition, students will develop their ideas in a much better way. Second, workshops and lectures will be arranged at the beginning of the year. These events invites experienced entrepreneurs to talk about their approach and help the students work on their businesses. Even without the competition, these lectures are very helpful in bringing students to entrepreneurship. Lastly, the monetary award helps the winners to roll out the business plan. With $25,000 given to the first place and 28 total award recipients, students can have a good start on their business.

University Involvements

The IBMC is currently co-hosted by Brigham Young University, Harvard University, and Stanford University. At the same time, it also encourages and helps the local sectors development. Currently, it has ten universities and colleges hosting qualifier competitions, and three participating universities.

Steps Required To Bring Resource to Campus

There are two ways of getting involved with the IBMC:

1. Become a participating university Advertise the competition and encourage the students to apply through general application process.
2. Become a qualifier competitions host Apply to be a qualifier competitions hosting university. Building the competition, organizing the competition, and running the competition.

General Application

Business Model Competition, unlike other students based competitions, is open to anyone who want to participate while meeting the Eligibility Criteria. Thus, bringing this competition to campus doesn't need to submit any application to BMC or establish local chapter on campus. And at the same time, BMC also enforces a set of rules that ensure the strong representation of students in the competing team, which makes it very attractive to new students entrepreneurs.

How to Apply

To apply to the IBMC, the team needs to fill out and submit the application form at the beginning of January. Before doing that, they also need to do the following: #Create a video presentation describing the up-to-date validation and customer discovery with the idea and business model.

1. Upload the video to YouTube
2. Fill out and sign the Certifications and Agreements, which needs to be scanned and uploaded in the application form.

Host Qualifier Competitions

IBMC also encourages the development of qualifier competitions at other colleges and universities. The winners of these competitions will receive an automatic advancement in the International Competition, while other contenders may still apply through the General Application. Any college or university interested in hosting a local competition is encouraged to contact businessmodelcompetition@gmail.com

Creating a University Competition

IBMC made a strategic guideline to help universities to start the BMC qualifier competition on their campus. The detailed documentation can be downloaded here: Download Guideline. In summary, the guideline discussed three topics:

• Building the Competition
• Organizing the Competition
• Running the Competition

Creating a university competition requires a group of leaders that includes at least one faculty adviser and one student director. The next primary objective is securing funding for the event and building the rest of the student team. To assist qualifier competitions, the IBMC also has several resources available through Dropbox. The school representative need to contact the IBMC or one of its administrators to request access to the files. To ask for any additional resource can contact businessmodelcompetition@gmail.com.

Contact Information

The administration office for the International BMC is held in the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at Brigham Young University. To contact the administrators of the IBMC contact the Rollins Center, fill out the contact form on this page, or send an email to businessmodelcompetition@gmail.com

Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship

470 Tanner Building Marriott School of Management Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602

Phone: (801) 422-7437 Fax: (801) 422-0109 E-mail: rollinscet@byu.edu