LOS ANGELES, California and CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia-- November 22, 2006– A team from the Desautels School of Business at McGillUniversity, Montreal, has captured the title of “Most Innovative MBA Team in the World” at the recently concluded 2006 Innovation Challenge® competition at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the Universityof Virginia. Teams from the Kenan-FlaglerSchoolat the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and MIT’s Sloan School of Management finished second and third respectively.
This year’s competition attracted more than 440 teams from 88 colleges and universities, from more than 15 countries. The 2006 Innovation Challenge® competition, the world’s oldest and largest “crowdcasting” innovation competition was sponsored this year by Hilton Hotels, DaimlerChrysler, Whirlpool Corporation, OPEN from American Express, General Electric Money, and M&M’s Chocolate Candies.
The McGill team, which finished 15th in the 2005 competition of
321 teams from 83 universities in 18 countries, put together two
winning programs for Hilton Hotels and DaimlerChrysler at the final
round on November 17 and 18th. The top 10 finalist teams were asked to
help DaimlerChrysler connect with Baby Boomers and help Hilton Hotels
grow through partnerships. The McGill team consists of Heather Powers,
Jonathan Powers, Luc Tran, Stavros Tsokonas, and Kanhaiya Sinha. A
panel of judges from sponsors, industry and academia, selected the
McGill team for their consistently innovative proposals and will
receive a $20,000 cash prize. .
A video announcement of the award, which was presented last weekend, can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYrzrUgHOk.
The competition was created and is managed by Idea
Crossing, Inc., Los Angeles, the organizer of innovative crowdcasting
idea competitions in public and private forums.
“We are delighted by the continued growth of this
competition and the incredible number of exceptional and truly
innovative ideas that have emerged from this event,” said Anil Rathi,
CEO and president, Idea Crossing, Inc. “The Innovation Challenge is now
firmly established as the world’s premier crowdcasting competition for
business innovation, attracting industry leading companies seeking the
best new ideas from the world’s brightest graduate students. The
quality, originality and relevance of the ideas presented by these
teams demonstrate the true potential of crowdcasting as a tool for
innovation.”
Crowdcasting is a relatively new concept fostered by Idea
Crossing, Inc. Crowdcasting is the intersection of broadcasting and
crowdsourcing which uses a combination of push and pull strategies to
first engage an audience to build a network of participants. The
network’s intellect is then harnessed for new insights and concepts
which can include new product and service ideas, new branding messages,
or even scientific breakthroughs. These insights are extracted from
participants' submissions.
To be most effective, crowdcasting usually takes the form of a competitive event with a compelling prize.
Idea Crossing provides services that enable public and
private idea competitions such as the Innovation Challenge to serve as
a forum for tapping into the creative imaginations of employees,
consumers, external technical, design and other expert thinkers who can
add to an organization’s bottom line quickly and efficiently.
Idea Crossing's clients include DaimlerChrysler, Hilton
Hotels, IBM, American Express, Chiquita, General Electric, Whirlpool,
Sunbeam, Sprint, M&M’s Chocolate Candies, and the United States
Postal Service.
For a summary of this year’s 2006 Innovation Challenge®
competition or to become a sponsor in 2007, go to
http://www.innovationchallenge.com/.
About Idea Crossing, Inc.
Based in Los Angeles, Idea Crossing is currently helping
corporations capture fresh ideas from customers, virtual teams,
salespeople, suppliers, citizens and community members through
crowdcasting programs. Idea Crossing’s automated crowdcasting system
and competition processes effectively streamline the management of
large-scale competitions such as the Innovation Challenge. By launching
a customized idea competition, companies can quickly build communities
of passionate consumers via crowdcasting that derive new ways of
thinking and innovative solutions in a changing business environment.
Innovation Challenge is a registered service mark of Idea Crossing, Inc.
For more information on Idea Crossing, go to www.ideacrossing.com.
# # #
Innovation Challenge is a registered service mark of Idea Crossing,
Inc.; all other company, organization and product names are trademarks
of their respective holders.
Contact: Dan Chmielewski
Madison Alexander PR, Inc.
For Idea Crossing, Inc.
(714) 832-8716
(949) 231-2965
[email protected]
Recent Comments