Idea Crossing

Meet the Finalists: MIT (Sloan) Team

Jeanne Kesapradist, Christian Lafon, Matt Lamantia, and Dave Schiller are members of the MIT Finalist Team.  Listen to their insights about the USPS Innovation Challenge question and their process for innovating the customer experience.

How to Win the Innovation Challenge Part II: Writing Your Concept Plan

Dear Participants:

Tomorrow at 11:59pm Arizona Time is the submission deadline for the 2005 Innovation Challenge!  As it stands, only 10 teams have submitted plans.  On the last day of submission we experience an enormous amount of traffic.  Therefore, we ask for your patience while you insert your submission.  Keep a backup copy in plain text using Notepad or another plain text editor and save frequently so that you are safeguarded from possible site delays. Use this editor to generate clean HTML, to format text or to create simple tables. Our team will be standing by on Skype, via phone and in our offices. Our goal is to help get everyone's plan into the system before the judging begins!

Part Two: Writing Your Concept Plan

2004 Winning Team: How to win the Innovation Challenge (Part II)

Richard Caelius is the team leader of the 2004 Most Innovative MBA Team in the World from Instituto de Empresa.  Now he lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

Here the second part of an essay containing some tips and tricks on what helped us win last year’s Innovation Challenge. This part covers the steps from generating the concept to figuring out the details and presenting it.

The Innovation Challenge has begun!

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Innovation Challenge! 

We sincerely thank all 1450 contestants in 18 countries around the  world for competing this year.

This is your opportunity to create the next breakthrough innovation.

3rd Annual Innovation Challenge
321 teams
83 universities
18 countries

The world's largest business innovation competition.

powered by Idea Crossing

Part One: How to Win the Innovation Challenge

Part One: How to Win the Innovation Challenge

This is the 3rd time we've run the Thunderbird Global Innovation Challenge and I've seen hundreds of submissions and presentations by some of the most innovative MBAs in the world and...by some of the least.  In addition to my own observation, I've spoken with hundreds of judges, dozens of sponsors and countless experts on the topic of innovation.  This "how to" article is not a step-by-step guide to generating innovative ideas, it is however, intended to give you some direction, resources and advice...from my perspective. You'll also hear the perspective of Richard Caelius (a great guy), the winning team leader of the 2004 Most Innovative MBA Team in the World from Instituto de Empresa.

2004 Winning Team: How to Win the Innovation Challenge

Richard Caelius is the team leader from the 2004 Most Innovative MBA Team in the World from Instituto de Empresa, Spain. He's on the far left in this picture

Dear participants:

The Innovation Challenge 2005 is drawing near and exciting times lie ahead. You’ve probably read the rules, maybe a few times, checked the deadlines, you have a team assembled or at least a shortlist of potential team-mates. So you’re almost set to get those innovative ideas flowing – right?

Great, so here are a few bits and pieces of advice that might just improve your chances of going to the final round and maybe winning this year's competition. As the captain of last years winning team some of my lessons learnt might come in handy.

Tips for Generating Ideas

Dr. VanGundy has been a judge for the third consecutive year.  He is the Chief Judge for the final round and is the Chief Framing Architect for the official Innovation Challenge questions.

Tips for Generating Ideas

Arthur (Andy) VanGundy
[email protected]

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Innovation Challenge!

Dear Innovation Challenge Contestants:

On behalf of the Idea Crossing/Innovation Challenge team we welcome you to the 3rd Annual Thunderbird Global Innovation Challenge!  On October 8th, you will begin a journey into an innovative experience you will remember during your MBA career.

Over the past 8 months, we've been working with sponsors, judges, speakers, students and software engineers to launch a new and improved competition.  We sincerely thank all judges, sponsors and contestants for providing such valuable feedback to collectively improve the experience. In addition, special thanks goes to my innovative teammates Hoang Tran, Kenton Williams, Jairaj Mashru, Matt Harker, Ravi Mujumdar and Dr. Andy VanGundy. Without their energy, sleepless nights,  unique personalities and passion, this project would not be possible. Finally, I'd like to thank Scott Walker, CEO of BillMatrix, my mentor and a savvy entrepreneur, for his motivational support and guidance for the past 3 years.