Harvard Business School (HBS) says that it will hold a new business plan competition open to HBS alumni from all over the world. Qualified ventures will compete for a cash prize of $25,000.
The contest—which was formally announced online by the business school’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and Alumni Relations—will be open to teams that have at least one HBS alumnus. The business school said on its website that more than half of HBS alumni consider themselves to be entrepreneurs, and the school hopes that this competition, called the Alumni New Venture Contest, will become an annual event.
The business school has been holding an annual business plan contest for a dozen years or so, but that competition is geared toward current HBS students. (Here are the details of that contest from our recent list of New England business plan competitions.) The new competition, however, is targeting HBS alumni—and not only those from the U.S. and Europe but also alumni in the emerging markets of Brazil and India.
There will be preliminary contests for the competition held at separate sites—including Boston, San Diego, New York, London, Brazil, and India, among others—in March. Those regional contests will be followed by a final round here in Boston on April 26. Deadlines for entries vary from site to site, according to the business school.