HCL, a global IT service provider based from India is sponsoring an innovation and idea competition for MBA students. Ideas will be judged based on potential impact, feasibility and popularity. Looks like HCL management is looking for collaboration with outside parties, in this case students, for idea generation. I think bringing students into the innovation chain is a good idea in terms of generating new and fresh ideas. However, there is this problem of having too many entries in competitions like this and there should be some process in place that bubbles up worthy enough ideas. Looks like in this case, the competition organizers use crowd source to rank up good ideas. Though this seems to work for problem/solutions forums like Stackoverflow, I am not sure if this strategy would bring out ideas that work best for the organizations running the competition.
Between, check out some interesting ideas under barriers for innovation category.
One reply on “Innovating with students and competitions”
Another example of ways to bring innovation and people with bright ideas is what the Chilean government is doing. They are offering $40,000 dollars to anyone who wants to go and start a company there. With no obligation other than just go there and build the company. Most of the companies will fail, but foreigners will teach locals about entrepreneurship, risk taking and global markets. Some of them will succeed (5% to 10% estimated).
I find that it goes in the right direction, but we have to keep in mind that Chilean population is roughly 17 million people. Is the government over investing in this initiative?