Tuesday's Wall Street Journal included an article titled "Business-Plan Contests Become 'American Idol Meets Trump'."

We at Brody Weiser Burns regularly serve as judges and planning consultants to nonprofit business planning competitions.  The biggest of these was the Yale-Goldman-Sachs Competition that for three years, provided $100,000 to the top 4 winners.  BWB "clients" won 2 of the three years.

As the WSJ article notes, winning does provide cash awards as well as other benefits including assistance in the development of the plan and lots of PR that often provides more access to cash or contracts.

But, it was never clear to me what criteria counted most for winning.  As the article again noted, "the contests reward those who can make the slickest presentations rather than those whose plan can realistically be implemented."  And, this may be true, I can't say.  It really just was not always clear what it took to win.  One year, no arts groups won.  That was the year we lost.