STANFORD, Calif. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - "Make Saving Money Fun." That's the task that thousands of students of all ages from at least 51 countries will tackle in the next week in response to a challenge unveiled yesterday by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. And the students' actions just may help people find a way through the global recession.
Free to interpret the challenge any way they want, students have just eight days to come up with innovative solutions and convey their results in a short video posted to YouTube. Called the Global Innovation Tournament 2009, the competition is organized by STVP at Stanford University for Global Entrepreneurship Week and run locally by over 100 universities, schools and other organizations. The global sponsor for the competition is Intuit Inc., a leading provider of financial management solutions for consumers and small businesses.
An official activity of the week, the competition is designed to inspire students to work in teams, challenge assumptions, seize opportunities and be creative. Most of all, it gives them a taste of what it's like to be entrepreneurial; students must deliver results while working with tight constraints, such as limited time and resources. Great ideas are not enough - they actually need to implement their ideas. Local and then global judges will determine who has had the biggest impact during the eight days.
Past versions of this competition involved giving students a common object, such as Post-it Notes, rubber bands, or water bottles, and challenging them to create as much value as possible from these objects in a few days. Teams invented products, raised and donated money, composed music, entertained, helped the disabled, made political statements, educated children, and much more.
Producer, Quincy Jones, III, and Grammy-Award winning hip-hop artist, Chamillionaire, helped launch the tournament live at Stanford yesterday afternoon in front of 1,700 people. They shared their experiences as entrepreneurs who use the very skills that tournament participants must draw upon and talked about innovation in the changing music industry. The local winners in most locations will be announced during Global Entrepreneurship Week, Nov. 16-22, and global winners will be announced online on Thursday, Dec. 3, on www.unleashingideas.org.
"This competition is a condensed, entrepreneurship immersion experience," said Jonathan Ortmans, president of Global Entrepreneurship Week. "It's enormously empowering for the students to realize they can create value from virtually nothing. This is the fourth time STVP has run this competition, and the results are always astounding."
Added Tina Seelig, the creator of the competition and the executive director of STVP: "This year's challenge addresses a global problem, the recession. It has had a devastating effect on companies, individuals, communities, and entire countries. Those who have been least affected either have financial reserves to draw upon or know how to do more with less. We want to show students that even the world's most serious problems can be turned into wonderful opportunities and generate a positive impact."
Intuit's chief innovation officer, Kris Halvorsen, said that the challenge could yield new ways of thinking about personal finance.
"Entrepreneurial students collaborating to solve an important problem that has global impact is right in line with Intuit's fast-paced, innovation-centric culture. And, in this economic downturn, Intuit is more focused than ever on helping consumers and small businesses save and make money," Halvorsen said. "As ardent supporters of the next generation of innovators, we applaud Stanford's open approach to uncovering fresh ideas that will positively affect how people create value and make and manage their money."
This competition is the beginning of thousands of celebrations that will mark Global Entrepreneurship Week, which was co-founded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the UK's Make Your Mark campaign. More than 85 countries are preparing a variety of activities and challenges.
There is still time for students and organizations interested in participating in the Global Innovation Tournament to jump in. Details are available at http://www.unleashingideas.org/tournament.
About Global Entrepreneurship Week
With the goal to inspire young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity, Global Entrepreneurship Week will encourage youth to think big, turn their ideas into reality, and make their mark. From Nov. 16 - 22, 2009, millions of young people around the world will join a growing movement to generate new ideas and seek better ways of doing things. Tens of thousands of activities are being planned in dozens of countries. Global Entrepreneurship Week is founded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Make Your Mark campaign. For more information, visit www.unleashingideas.org, and follow @unleashingideas on Twitter.
About the Stanford Technology Ventures Program
The Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) is the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering. Hosted by the Department of Management Science and Engineering, STVP is focused on advancing business skills and research insights that will help entrepreneurial leaders use innovations to solve major world problems, with an emphasis on the environment, human health, information technology, and other global issues. STVP creates scholarly research on technology-based firms and teaches entrepreneurship skills to graduate and undergraduate students across campus. STVP's outreach programs include a free podcast and video website featuring entrepreneurial thought leaders (http://ecorner.stanford.edu) and conferences for entrepreneurship educators worldwide. http://stvp.stanford.edu
About Intuit Inc.
Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses; financial institutions, including banks and credit unions; consumers and accounting professionals. Its flagship products and services, including QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax®, simplify small business management and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing. ProSeries and Lacerte are Intuit's leading tax preparation software suites for professional accountants. The company's financial institutions division, anchored by Digital Insight, provides on-demand banking services to help banks and credit unions serve businesses and consumers with innovative solutions.
Founded in 1983, Intuit had annual revenue of $3.2 billion in its fiscal year 2009. The company has approximately 7,800 employees with major offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and other locations. More information can be found at www.intuit.com.
Intuit, Quicken, and QuickBooks, among others, are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries.
Post-it is a registered trademark of 3M.
for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program
Global Innovation Tournament
Theresa Lina Stevens, 415-203-1800
media representative
theresa.lina@stanford.edu
or
Global Entrepreneurship Week
Mark Marich, 202-467-2774
media representative
mmarich@unleashingideas.org
or
Intuit Inc.
Allison Green, 650-944-2512
media representative
allison_green@intuit.com
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