Teams with innovative business ideas will compete April 3 for $10,000 and free office space at the Hoosier Hatchery, a workstation that provides entrepreneurs space to advance their innovations.
The competition, open to all current IU students, undergraduate, graduate, Ph.D. candidates and majors, is sponsored by the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Kelley School of Business and Clapp Investment, Ltd.
“Ideas come from everywhere so we want to make sure that every student on campus considers entering,” Edward Drakhlis, an Innovation Fellow at the Johnson Center, said.
“We are simply looking for people who are serious and passionate about turning their idea into a business.”
DoubleMap, a website and app that provides real-time bus tracking, was the first winner of the IDEA ?Competition.
Dr. Donald Kuratko, Executive & Academic Director of the Johnson Center, said the competition started to encourage ideas from all disciplines on the IU campus.
“There is no question that we have some of the most talented and creative students in the world here at IU, but there was no real outlet to showcase their thinking in terms of potential new ventures,” he said.
Kuratko said the competition provides students the opportunity to pitch their concept in front of top professionals and gain tremendous experience and confidence in their ideas.
Drakhlis said, though it might be intimidating to compete against students from the business school, each team will have a mentor from the Kelley School of Business MBA program to help teams through the process.
After the competition, Drakhlis said many of the teams continue with their business because the experience helped them organize themselves and the mentors gave them the guidance to understand the next steps to take.
“Last year, four teams were awarded office space because their ideas were so good,” he said. “There are plenty of resources at IU that can help a startup grow, and those need to be tapped into by any team that wants to keep going with their idea.”
Max Brickman, founder of CleanSlate and 2014 winner of the Clapp IDEA Competition, went on to win RECESS, a national pitch contest backed by billionaire Mark Cuban.
Drakhlis said past winners have gone on to appear on television and apply for “Shark Tank.”
“The experience of working with the mentors and understanding what it takes to transform ideas into real businesses is worth more than the prize ?money,” he said.
