Fowler Business Concept Challenge 2026

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Description


This annual event is organized by the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship and is open to all current University of St. Thomas undergraduate and graduate students. Students must be registered in the semester of competition with a valid St.Thomas student ID.

Students can compete in two different tracks:

Business Track: : For students who want to build a high-growth, profitable venture with the potential to attract investors and scale in the marketplace.

Social Track: For students who want to design innovative solutions to pressing social or environmental challenges, creating impact while ensuring the venture is financially sustainable.

Special Tracks 

Students are encouraged to compete for additional scholarship money through three special tracks open to all semifinalists. 

Kate Herzog Memorial Award: The Kate Herzog Memorial Award is awarded every year in honor of Kate Herzog ’09 MBA. Kate was an entrepreneur, mentor, and teacher. Kate started her venture, House of Talents, to help artisans build the lives they envision for themselves. This award will support aspiring social entrepreneurs with a passion for poverty alleviation, serving under-resourced communities, and closing opportunity gaps.

Health Equity Champion Award: The Health Equity Champion Award aims to recognize and celebrate an innovative business concept that will advance health equity. This special award seeks to spotlight companies that are making significant strides in addressing health disparities and ensuring equal access to healthcare solutions for all. 

Best Use of Technology Award: The Best Use of Technology Award aims to recognize and celebrate an innovative business concept that will effectively and ethically utilize emerging technology to solve a significant problem that has a substantial market opportunity. 

Students who compete in the semifinal competition but do not advance to the finals competition will be awarded a scholarship of $1,500 for 2nd place in your semifinal room, or $1,000 per team for 3rd or 4th place in your semifinal room.

Rules

Requirements 

Submissions should be new concepts, not already existing companies. No concepts that have won or placed in the finals of a previous Fowler competition may be submitted again. Students are allowed to re-submit a concept that was previously accepted to the semifinal competition, so long as the concept did not advance to the finals round.

Submissions that placed in the finals of the Business Plan Competition, e-Fest, or the FGSIC in the previous academic year are not eligible for the Fowler Business Concept Challenge. 

Students may submit up to two submissions in each track (a total of 4 submissions), but students are limited to one concept eligible to compete in the semifinal and final competition.

DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME OR NAMES OF YOUR TEAM MEMBERS ON THE SUBMISSION DOCUMENT. 

Submission Requirements 

Provide a brief description of your business concept following the prompts outlined below. Your submission can be a maximum of five pages, double-spaced, 11-point font. If you include a cover page and reference page, that will not count toward the five page maximum.

Business Track Judging Criteria

  1. Originality: business idea is new, novel and unique
  2. Value Proposition: a clear and compelling value proposition – legitimate, recognized need and appropriate solution
  3. Competitive Advantage: creates more value for customer than alternative solutions
  4. Market Opportunity: adequate market size; viable business model
  5. Feasibility: reasonable prospect of funding and successful implementation
  6. Stakeholders and Society: clear understanding and articulation of impact on stakeholders and society – demonstrate understanding of potential benefits, harms, ethical issues, that might arise in conjunction with this concept and how to address them
  7. Well-researched: demonstrates clear understanding of customer/customer need, market, competitive set, solution requirements
  8. Investment Opportunity: the business concept is attractive to potential investors as it has a good opportunity to have substantial return
  9. AI Transparency Statement: clearly and accurately discloses how AI was used, evaluated, verified, and supplemented by human insight

Social Track Judging Criteria

  1. Social or Environmental Problem: Research-based outline of a social or environmental problem that needs to be addressed
  2. Originality: business idea is a new, novel and unique approach to addressing stated problem
  3. Value Proposition: a clear and compelling value proposition – legitimate, recognized need and appropriate solution
  4. Competitive Advantage: creates more value for customer than alternative solutions while also offering a solution to a social/environmental problem
  5. Market Opportunity: adequate market size; viable business model
  6. Feasibility: reasonable prospect of funding and successful implementation
  7. Stakeholders and Society: clear understanding and articulation of impact on stakeholders and society – demonstrate understanding of potential benefits, harms, ethical issues, that might arise in conjunction with this concept and how to address them
  8. Well-researched: customer/customer need, market, competitive set, solution requirements
  9. Impact: the potential for positive social/environmental impact is significant
  10. AI Transparency Statement: clearly and accurately discloses how AI was used, evaluated, verified, and supplemented by human insight

Eligibility

The competition is open exclusively to all University of St. Thomas undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows registered in the semester of the competition. Students can participate as individuals or as part of a team. Teams typically consist of two to four members. All members of a team must be current students with a valid St. Thomas student ID.