The Darden School proved successful at the sixth annual Innovation Challenge, where two student teams swept all three possible awards, including one worth $20,000.
The Innovation Challenge is the world’s largest innovation competition available to M.B.A. students, said Philippe Sommer, Darden director of entrepreneurship programs. He noted that the competition is an opportunity for students to use their creative powers.
“Whatever you do in life, it’s that ability to think outside the box” that leads to success, Sommer said.
The competition gathers corporations from across the world, which pose specific questions to student teams.
“There are corporate sponsors who get involved who pose essential business problems that they’re dealing with in real life in their company,” Sommer said. “These are not theoretical problems. Through this challenge you ask student business teams across the world to come up with innovative solutions.”
This year, 260 teams from 55 schools across the world participated in the competition. Each team was designated a corporate sponsor, said first-year Darden student Andrew Beasley, a member of the University’s Team Wildhoos.
“You got randomly assigned one of those sponsor groups and then you were assigned your original challenge,” Beasley said.
Beasley said his team was asked to examine a problem facing RBC Bank and then write a three-page proposal outlining a solution
The corporate sponsors then ranked the proposals to determine which teams would advance into the semifinals, Beasley said, noting that this round involved a phone conference call.
“You had some representatives from RBC Bank who were listening to the presentation and firing questions at us,” he said.
The final round was held this past the weekend at the University, where the finalists gave presentations to a panel of judges that chose the three winners. After presenting, the groups were given two new problems to solve from Hilton and American Express OPEN, Sommer said.
“The best 10 solutions to those problems were the 10 finalists who came to Darden and competed with one another to answer two new questions,” Sommer said.
Each of the finalists then had the opportunity to present solutions for the two proposed questions to a panel, Beasley said.
“We had 15 minutes to present and then 10 minutes for [question-and-answer],” Beasley said. “It was exciting and challenging at same time ... there was a panel of judges and then [another] nine teams watching you in audience. It was a very intense and fun experience.” After the finals presentations the two Darden teams, Team Wildhoos and Team Alchemy, were announced as the winners of all three prizes.
Team Wildhoos won the American Express OPEN award and the $20,000 best overall prize. Team Alchemy won the Hilton prize, Sommer said.
“When they announced the awards we were really excited and jumping around,” said first-year Darden student Andrew Hutchinson, a member of Team Wildhoos.
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