Neither second-year Darden student Michael O'Brien nor first-year Darden student Natalia Postrigan expected their teams to make it to the finals in the business competition known as the Innovation Challenge. But O'Brien's team, Column 5, and Postrigan's team, High Octane, were named two of the top 10 most innovative MBA teams last month after competing against more than 280 teams from schools across the globe. The two teams will now go on to compete in the finals held at the Darden School next week.
The Innovation Challenge competition seeks to present business students with real-life business challenges from a variety of companies who also sponsor the competition, according to Anil Rathi, CEO of Idea Crossing, Inc., the creator of the Innovation Challenge competition. This year's sponsors of the national program are American Express, Harley-Davidson, Hilton Hotels, Lexmark, Shell and Whirlpool.
Participating in the competition were 287 teams from 63 schools that represented 57 countries. Students from the Darden School comprised 33 of the teams, Rathi said.
The team of Column 5 includes second-year Darden students Sarah Glass, Gail Ballantyne, Piyush Parikh and team leader O'Brien. The other team, High Octane, consists of first-year Darden students Amandeep Randhawa and Alex Steblev, second-year Darden student Rahul Prabhu and team leader Postrigan.
"We all talked ourselves into believing we were going to make it," O'Brien said. "We were still surprised."
Randhawa echoed a similar sentiment.
"I never expected ... to be in the top 10," Randhawa said. "We expected to be [in the] top 30 and 40. It's the best feeling in the world right now."
The 10 teams in the finals are competing for the title of Most Innovative MBA Team in the World and the top three teams will receive $30,000, Rathi said. With only one week left before the competition, both teams are hard at work preparing for the final round.
"It's exceptionally demanding," O'Brien said, adding that his team meets every night for three hours or more.
Each team must come up with innovative ideas for Hilton Hotels and American Express for the final round, Rathi said.
Though competing against each other, team members said no real rivalry has emerged between the two Darden groups.
"We feel great to be competing with another team from Darden," O'Brien said. "We don't view them as antagonists or opponents. We're excited that there are two teams representing the school in the competition."
Randhawa agreed, adding that she believes the best team should win and she will be happy if that happens to be one of the Darden teams.
For the first round of competition, teams were allowed to choose which sponsor's business challenge to undertake. Column 5 chose to take on Lexmark's challenge of appealing to the "mobile millenial generation," O'Brien said.
High Octane chose Shell's challenge and came up with a new addition to one of the company's existing product lines, according to Postrigan.
Members of both teams said they are hopeful of a win in the final round.
"I'm optimistic that we will put together a solid concept and do a fantastic job presenting," Ballantyne said. "I'm looking forward to our team representing Darden"
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