Competing for more than profit

By Peter Walker for CNN

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The entrepreneurial challenge has long been a mainstay of MBA life. Students get together before a panel of judges to pitch their business ideas, the best being rewarded with accolades and -- often -- start-up cash.

However, more and more these days the judges are looking for something beyond just a cold-eyed profit opportunity -- they want sustainability.

This is illustrated by two contests at leading schools, one just gone and the other upcoming.

Several weeks ago, students from eight US school gathered at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School to take part in a competition which labels itself the only such event to consider the so-called "triple bottom line" of profit, environmental friendliness and social equity.

The second Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition has another twist to other contests in that the students get to pick one of four business plans from real world entrepreneurs and, together with them, pitch it before judges.

Making this even trickier, students receive the plans in advance but only have 15 minutes to quiz the entrepreneurs in person.

"Part of the game plan was to get as much information as possible, but also to be friendly," said Heidi Lubin, one of the winning group of MBA students from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

"The challenge was to build a rapport and avoid putting the companies on the defensive under a difficult, but necessary, line of questioning."

Big prizes

In a similar vein, next month sees the grandly-named 21st Century Challenge Competition at Oxford University's Saïd Business School.

The contest -- which carries a healthy $40,000 first prize -- is intended to promote sustainable new businesses that mix financial returns with "significant social and environmental benefits."

These can include new products and services, innovative operational processes and business models.

"We want to contribute to broadening the idea of business and encourage radical thinking in the pursuit of sustainable business models and markets," said Fiona Reid, Director of Entrepreneurship Saïd, the entrepreneurial arm of the school.

"We hope the competition will become a launch pad for successful commercial ventures in key challenge areas facing society."

A third contest has taken a different approach to business idea competitions -- handing the winner no-strings cash so they can work on their idea during their MBA vacation, when they would normally be carrying out a more formal internship.

The newly-devised Wharton Venture Award saw six students from the University of Pennsylvania's business school of the same name handed $10,000 grants.

Many of the winners are high-tech ideas, such as SpotShop, a company which has devised tools that allow local businesses to build and place video ads online.

Winning the award "has really jump-started our company," said a grateful SpotShop founder, Nat Turner. "Resources in a startup are always tight."

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