The sixth annual Innovation Challenge, billed as the world’s largest business innovation competition for MBA students, took place this past weekend in Charlottesville, and hometown teams from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business beat out international competitors to win each of the three prizes in the event’s final round.
Darden teams took three of the ten spots in the final competition, out of an initial field that included more than 260 entering teams representing 55 schools and 48 countries. Competing teams have nine days to write a concept plan to address one of five real-world challenges facing the competition’s corporate sponsors. Twenty-five teams advance to the semi-final round to pitch sponsors directly with their plans, and ten teams meet face to face for the final round.
Examples of the types of challenges MBA teams are invited to respond to as part of the competition include the following:
• How might Hilton foster a thriving service culture among employees?
• How might IBM market itself to businesses in China and India as the leader in creating value in business process innovation?
• How might Sprint create an innovative product or service, greatly increasing the subscriber’s quality of life, using Wide Area Wireless High Speed technologies?
Darden’s clean sweep included the “Most Innovative MBA Team in the World” title, which went to Team Wildhoos. Wildhoos also won the American Express OPEN Award and the $20,000 competition overall prize. Another Darden team, Team Alchemy, won the Hilton Award, the challenge’s third prize.
Other schools that made it to the final round this year included Manchester Business School, with two teams; Australian School of Business; Chinese University of Hong Kong; University of California-Davis Graduate School of Management; University of Washington Business School; and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Brand Center.
The Innovation Challenge was launched in 2002 by Idea Crossing, a Los Angeles start-up built around the idea that organizations can capture the collective ideas of crowds to help solve crucial strategic challenges. This year’s corporate sponsors were American Express OPEN, Hilton Hotels, the Navy Federal Credit Union, RBC Bank and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
To learn more, visit the Innovation Challenge website or watch competition-related videos on YouTube.
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