I was involved with planning a large, nationwide business plan competition (mitcep.org). Steve raises some very good points, and I've forwarded his post to the current leadership with the hopes that we can incorporate some of his advice to improve next year's competition.
However, I think Steve misses the point of what these competitions are doing. They are taking students who've never before considered themselves entrepreneurs (and who've gotten to where they are by getting A's in classes or being consultants) and encouraging them to become a part of the startup world, by forming a team, attacking a market need, and pitching to investors. Everyone involved (including the judges) knows that the static business plan is merely a demonstration of the team's ability to pitch, not a rigid guideline for what the team would do for the next few years. At the end of the competition, the winner is not the team that gets the cash (although I'm sure it doesn't hurt their egos) but every student who participated and pushed themselves to learn about startups and themselves.
I wonder if you're missing Steve's point. You say:
Everyone involved (including the judges) knows that the static business plan is merely a demonstration of the team's ability to pitch, not a rigid guideline for what the team would do for the next few years.
"Ability to pitch" is not a prequisite to building a business, it's an impediment. Learning to pitch the wrong thing well isn't helpful. And discovering the right thing to pitch requires an entirely different approach, often 180 degrees from traditional business plan activities.
Engaging prospects to tune or even radically change the business is a required step. Omitting that step doesn't create a subset, it leaves unnecessary errors.
It's funny how much less you need to be good at pitching when you know you have it nailed through proper process. Better to teach that process than to teach how to pitch the wrong thing.
What's the point of teaching "how" to do the wrong "what"?
By that logic, what good was it for me to learn how to solve arbitrary math problems in 7th grade, if the real "what" that I'd need math for later was yet to be found? Developing skills in the context of an educational environment might not be as efficient as in "the real world", but it's still extremely useful.
The ability to pitch might not matter in a field like abstract mathematics where the product is everything and the "customers" are knowledgeable and rational, but that's rarely true elsewhere in life.
edit: Even more generally... if you saw two wolf pups play-fighting in the wild, would you tell them they're wasting their time since they're never going to eat each other?
> Even more generally... if you saw two wolf pups play-fighting in the wild, would you tell them they're wasting their time since they're never going to eat each other?
Wolves do fight one another. They also fight their prey, which they do eat. Practice fighting seems quite relevant to real wolves.
What do you learn by pitching? One answer is "sales".
However, I think Steve misses the point of what these competitions are doing. They are taking students who've never before considered themselves entrepreneurs (and who've gotten to where they are by getting A's in classes or being consultants) and encouraging them to become a part of the startup world, by forming a team, attacking a market need, and pitching to investors. Everyone involved (including the judges) knows that the static business plan is merely a demonstration of the team's ability to pitch, not a rigid guideline for what the team would do for the next few years. At the end of the competition, the winner is not the team that gets the cash (although I'm sure it doesn't hurt their egos) but every student who participated and pushed themselves to learn about startups and themselves.