Business Plan Competitions and Technology Transfer.

摘要

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) commissioned this report in order to examine the effectiveness of business plan competitions at helping cleantech startup companies become successful business entities. Success is broadly defined in this report by the company's ability to attract outside investors and to raise funding, both of which we view as a proxy for the company's likelihood to effectively transfer its technology to the market for wide-scale production. The reports findings may be used to support the value of business plan competitions--particularly the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Industry Growth Forum (IGF), a clean technology business plan competition. This report concludes that companies that present at the IGF on average raise several million more dollars in funding than those that applied and were not selected to present a key indicator of a company's chances for future success. Another discovery in the report demystifies the assumption that a company's physical location and proximity to a larger pool of investors (such as those based in California and Massachusetts) significantly impact its chances of success.