A com­pre­hen­sive list of all busi­ness com­pe­ti­tions in North Amer­ica can be found at Biz Plan Com­pe­ti­tions.

Michi­gan Busi­ness Competitions

Great Lakes Entrepreneur’s Quest Busi­ness Plan Competition

The mis­sion of the Great Lakes Entrepreneur’s Quest, and its com­pe­ti­tion, is to con­tin­u­ally encour­age and edu­cate entre­pre­neurs on the cre­ation, start up and early growth stages of high-growth busi­nesses within the state of Michi­gan. This will be accom­plished by link­ing entre­pre­neurs pur­su­ing high-growth oppor­tu­ni­ties with access to a statewide net­work of com­mu­nity resources, expert advice, high qual­ity edu­ca­tion, man­age­ment tal­ent and cap­i­tal at every stage of development.

Michi­gan Busi­ness Challenge

The Zell Lurie Insti­tute at Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan is a lead­ing inno­va­tor in entre­pre­neur­ial edu­ca­tion, advanc­ing skills and arm­ing entre­pre­neur­ial grad­u­ates with exclu­sive resources to cat­alyze inno­va­tion, cre­ate high-growth ven­tures or join start-ups.

The Next Great Idea: Oswego County Busi­ness Plan Competition

NGI is the result of busi­ness and com­mu­nity lead­ers join­ing together to cre­ate a com­pe­ti­tion that encour­ages entre­pre­neurs to com­mit to new busi­ness devel­op­ment in Oswego County and offers a $25,000 prize to help make that dream come true.

TiECon Mid­west 2010 — Busi­ness Karma 3.0

TiE is a global, not-for-profit, non-political and non-religious orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to fos­ter­ing entre­pre­neurs across its inter­na­tional net­work spon­sored by top Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Firms, and For­tune 500 cor­po­ra­tions; spread across 53 chap­ters in 12 coun­tries com­pris­ing 1800 expe­ri­enced entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness exec­u­tives as char­ter mem­bers, 12000 aspir­ing entre­pre­neurs and pro­fes­sion­als as mem­bers. TiE has grown to become the world’s largest non-profit orga­ni­za­tion for entrepreneurs.

Michi­gan Based Stu­dent Competitions

GVSU Cen­ter for Entre­pre­neur­ship and Inno­va­tion Busi­ness Plan Competition

The Cen­ter for Entre­pre­neur­ship and Inno­va­tion at the Sei­d­man Col­lege of Busi­ness serves to pro­mote, pre­serve, influ­ence, and impact stu­dents, fac­ulty, and the com­mu­nity through qual­ity aca­d­e­mic research, resource man­age­ment, and infor­ma­tion ser­vices in the field of entre­pre­neur­ship. The cen­ter fos­ters inter­ac­tion within var­i­ous work­shops and sem­i­nars, as well as through coor­di­na­tion of pro­grams with local busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions. The cen­ter is a cat­a­lyst in the cross-disciplinary devel­op­ment of research and action through­out the uni­ver­sity and the West Michi­gan com­mu­nity serv­ing to bring busi­ness and non-business fac­ulty and stu­dents together to fos­ter the trans­fer of ideas into com­mer­cial­ized ventures.

Michi­gan Busi­ness Challenge

The Institute’s inno­v­a­tive real-world approach and the Busi­ness School’s tra­di­tional man­age­ment excel­lence encour­ages and nur­tures stu­dents in prepar­ing for entre­pre­neur­ial careers to suc­ceed, autonomously or in a cor­po­rate set­ting, as lead­ers for new ven­ture cre­ation and growth. Under the guid­ance of Pro­fes­sor Thomas Kin­n­ear, the Insti­tute pro­vides access to cap­i­tal, com­pe­ti­tions, and other means of sig­nif­i­cant sup­port and resources for stu­dents to take the knowl­edge learned in the class­room, build a busi­ness plan, and actu­ally launch a busi­ness while earn­ing their degree. In addi­tion, the Insti­tute works with other acclaimed Uni­ver­sity research units, such as the Med­ical Cen­ter and Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing, to intro­duce stu­dents to new ven­ture oppor­tu­ni­ties and to accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial­iza­tion process for Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan ideas and technologies.

New Busi­ness Ven­ture Competition

This Com­pe­ti­tion is designed to encour­age entre­pre­neur­ial activism among stu­dents by rec­og­niz­ing and reward­ing those who present detailed plans on design­ing and cre­at­ing new busi­ness enter­prises, draw­ing on their own ideas and inven­tions or those of oth­ers. The Com­pe­ti­tion pro­vides a forum for these stu­dents to present their new ven­ture plans to investors, receive mean­ing­ful feed­back, have the oppor­tu­nity to start a new busi­ness, and apply class­room learn­ing to real world projects. The busi­ness plans must pro­pose ven­tures that will be finan­cially prof­itable, cre­ate new jobs, and be lawful.

Renew­able Energy Case Competition

A busi­ness case com­pe­ti­tion focused on find­ing renew­able tech­nolo­gies that are imme­di­ately applic­a­ble in emerg­ing mar­kets, the Inter­na­tional Renew­able Energy Case Com­pe­ti­tion (IRECC) is orga­nized cen­trally by Investors Beyond Bor­ders. The pur­pose of the Inter­na­tional Renew­able Energy Case Com­pe­ti­tion is to pro­vide stu­dents oppor­tu­ni­ties to gain diverse expe­ri­ence in cre­at­ing a pro­posal for an inter­na­tional busi­ness ven­ture in an emerg­ing coun­try. Stu­dents will be chal­lenged to apply cre­ative, ana­lyt­i­cal and team­work abil­i­ties on an inter­na­tional stage.

Sei­d­man Col­lege of Busi­ness — Regional Busi­ness Plan Competition

The com­pe­ti­tion was spon­sored by the Sei­d­man Col­lege of Busi­ness’ Cen­ter for Entre­pre­neur­ship and Inno­va­tion. The top seven under­grad­u­ate stu­dents who entered the com­pe­ti­tion pitched their busi­ness plans to mem­bers of the West Michi­gan busi­ness and entre­pre­neur­ship com­mu­nity in com­pe­ti­tion for cash prizes total­ing $10,000. The seven were selected from an orig­i­nal pool of 32-entries over a demand­ing two month process.

Skan­dalaris Busi­ness Plan Competition

The Cen­ter for Entre­pre­neur­ship at East­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity, located within the Col­lege of Busi­ness, strives to cre­ate, encour­age and sus­tain the entre­pre­neur­ial spirit through its var­i­ous activ­i­ties. It assists emerg­ing growth com­pa­nies in the south­east­ern Michi­gan region with men­tor­ing, sem­i­nars, busi­ness plan reviews and struc­tured men­tor­ing and net­work­ing between entre­pre­neurs and var­i­ous resource providers.