Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Competition

Every year, thousands of high school students pitch their innovative business concepts to experienced entrepreneurs and business people, receive feedback on their ideas, join a community of like-minded students, and compete for thousands in cash prizes.

Blue Ocean Competition

• Students learn the methodology to maximize opportunities and minimize risks to drastically decrease the odds of failure for their entrepreneurial ideas.
• Students pursue both differentiation and low cost to formulate blue ocean business ideas.
• High schools students can all compete, wherever they may be in the world.
• High school students with just an idea for a blue ocean business can also participate.
• Blue Ocean tools and templates are provided to build your business idea and to structure your pitch.
• Students are recognized for their participation and outstanding achievement and also for Blue Ocean online course completion.
• Students and teachers have an opportunity to win prizes for their school. Resources are provided for teachers to teach the college-level course materials in their class.

Benefits

• 1st Place: $1000 + Sponsored Internship
• 2nd Place: $750
• 3rd Place: $500
• People’s Choice $750 (top pitch with the most likes on Youtube)  Certificates for all winners.
• Certificate of Participation is awarded to all participants who submit their pitch.
• Certificate of Outstanding Achievement is awarded to Top 10 pitches.

2024 Awards for participating Schools

• $1,000 to the school that has the most individual or team pitches that make the Top 25
• $1,000 to the top 5 schools who bring in the most submissions
• A 75″ One Screen Touch Screen is awarded to the school that best champions the competition
• Certificate of Outstanding Achievement is awarded to select Blue Ocean Teacher Champions
• Certificate of Recognition is awarded to select schools for supporting student entrepreneurship and innovation.

Participating is Easy

• Register for the competition solo or team up with up to four friends to compete together.
• Identify a pressing problem the world faces or a new market space that no one has tapped into.
• To address this, create something that the world hasn’t seen before and build a business idea around it.
• Check out the scoring criteria to make sure your idea qualifies as a blue ocean business.
• Reference the blue ocean pitch template to structure your video pitch.
• Record your 5-minute video, upload on YouTube, submit a link and the video file.

Why Compete

• Get real entrepreneurial experience. This is a practical exercise in entrepreneurship.
• Make your college applications stand out by participating in a world-class global competition.
• Learn about blue ocean strategy – often required reading in college
• Gain valuable experience developing and pitching blue ocean business ideas.
• Develop essential skills in communicating ideas, developing a pitch, working in a team or by yourself, and more.
• Get feedback from seasoned entrepreneurs and business executives.
• Win money for yourself. Win prizes for your school. No constraints on spending.
• Have fun challenging and beating high school students from all around the world!

Competition Rules

• All participants in the competition must be of high school age (14-18 years old at time or registration).
• Participants can compete individually or as part of a team (maximum 5 students per team).
• All participants must register for the competition. If you’re working with a team, all team members must register for the competition.
• The participants must complete the online Blue Ocean Mini-Course before submitting their pitch.
• All pitches must be original and not copied from somewhere else.
• All pitches must be in English.
• Pitches should be video files and must be under 5 minutes in length. The files must be under 1 GB.
• Upload your blue ocean pitch to YouTube with the hashtag #blueoceancompetition and include a link to the published video when submitting your entry on the pitch submission form.
• Top 100 pitches will be added to our YouTube channel once they are submitted.
• Pitches must not violate laws or trademarks.
• Blue Ocean Competition reserves the right to eliminate any pitch and/or disqualify any individual or team that it deems inappropriate or harmful to another team or the competition itself.
• No derogatory comments should be made on other pitches once they are up on YouTube.
• While there is no set format for pitches (voice-over animation or graphics or talking heads), they encourage you to use the templates provided to structure your pitch for increasing your chances of winning.
• Use of Blue Ocean tools to describe your business idea is mandatory. Use the Strategy Canvas to describe the industry landscape, the Three Tiers of NonCustomers to describe your target market and the Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid to describe your strategy.
• Each pitch will be evaluated by multiple judges who will watch randomly assigned pitches. They will combine the scores and then rank all pitches. The top pitches in each round will move to the next round. You only submit once.
• They start by choosing the Top 100 pitches. They then narrow the list down to the Top 25, then the Top 10 and then announce the winners.
• Each round is approximately 1-2 weeks. So, once they announce winners from one round, it will take them one-two weeks to narrow the list again.
• Judges will use the Scoring Criteria on the Resources page.
• Once they get to the Top 25 Pitches, they will provide feedback on your pitch from the judges in that round.
• The People’s Choice Award is chosen by a combination of YouTube likes and the own Judge likes. To be eligible, the pitch must be included in the Top 100 as chosen by the judges. You can have your friends and schoolmates “like” your video.
• If you’re working with a team, submit only 1 video entry per team. You will be asked to enter your team members’ names on the pitch submission form.
• Violation of any rule will result in disqualification.

For more information, visit Blue Ocean Student Entrepreneur Competition.