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Purpose of judging
The main purpose of the judging process is:
- To determine winners. This is obvious, but it’s up to you to decide what makes for a winner; you select the judging criteria. Does the winner have the most viable idea with the most qualified and cohesive-looking team? Does the winner have the most potential to provide social or environmental benefit?
- To provide feedback to participants (written and verbal)
- To maintain relationships with teams
Selecting judges
In recruiting judges, the first thing to consider is whether judgeships will come as part your sponsorship deals. If yes, your list of judges may already be set. If not, try to select judges from the venture capitalist and angel community, entrepreneurs, professionals and other businesspeople. Also, involving successful alumni at various levels of judging is an excellent way of keeping the extended school community interested and involved.
Avoid using student or faculty judges. Why no students? To prevent allegations of fraud or collusion among student participants and student judges, and to enable teams to get the most relevant feedback possible—this will usually not come from other students, as they have no outside professional experience. Why no faculty? To prevent the business plan writing from becoming an academic exercise—it shouldn’t be so much about how a plan is written as what it contains.
Structure of judging process
Business plans are generally broken into groups. Before the actual judging day, each group is read and rated individually by (typically) four judges. On judging day, each judge advocates a subset of plans, then all judges come together and select the winners (or the plans that advance to the next stage in the BPC). Once the winners are chosen, you could have the finalist teams make twenty-minute oral presentations of their plans, including demos if appropriate. The judges then have about ten minutes of Q&A with each team. After all teams have presented, the judges select the runners-up and the winning teams. |
