Governor?s Entrepreneurial Award Needs More Support

We’re betting the statewide business plan contest, known as the Governor’s Award for Entrepreneurial Development competition, gets renamed for one of the state’s business success stories in the next couple years.

That’s because the competition, the Arkansas startup business community’s version of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, needs additional financial support to survive. And it has become such a first-class event during the last three years — including offering one of the largest prize pools for a contest of its kind, $104,000 — that we can’t imagine one or more of the state’s entrepreneurial elite not endowing it with a gift that would guarantee its survival.

So far the Capital Resource Corp., an affiliate of The Arkansas Capital Corporation Group, has footed the vast majority of the bill. This year that includes paying for former Southwest Airlines Co. CEO Howard Putnam to serve as guest speaker at the awards banquet.

In previous years, Warren Stephens and Don Soderquist did that for free.

But Capital Resource can’t afford to underwrite the whole thing forever, and the 50 teams that participated this year (up 25 percent year-over-year) proves developing firms have enthusiasm for the event. The University of Arkansas’ Walton College of Business also uses it as a recruiting tool, and it’s one of the few examples the state has of a real effort to grow high-tech, high-wage businesses.