VCU Brandcenter students celebrate Innovation Challenge Win

By Tom Gresham

The Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter held a ceremony on Wednesday to celebrate the achievements of team “Brandslam,” four students in the graduate program that captured the $20,000 first prize in the international Innovation Challenge last week.

The students were feted in the Brandcenter’s Lecture Hall by a group that included Ashley Sommardahl, director of student affairs for the VCU Brandcenter; Beverly Warren, provost and vice president for academic affairs at VCU; Ed Grier, dean of the VCU School of Business; Tyler Moore, president of Brandcentral, the program’s student organization; Kim Scheeler, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce; and Erika Thompson-Kemp, vice president and general manager for AT&T Virginia and West Virginia. Brandcenter students and faculty cheered from the audience.

The Innovation Challenge® is a rigorous international competition that pits the world’s brightest graduate school student teams against one another to find creative technology solutions for businesses. More than 160 teams participated, including outfits from such highly regarded business programs as Harvard, Penn, California-Berkeley and Dartmouth.

The winning Brandslam students included team leader Jennifer Clinehens (creative brand management), Ryan Dowling (creative technology), Cody Pate (art direction) and Katlyn Williams (copywriting). Don Just, a Brandcenter professor, is the team’s faculty adviser.

Warren said team Brandslam’s accomplishment exemplifies the type of innovative, dynamic work that “we are trying to do here at VCU.”

“The Brandcenter is such a special place for learning,” Warren said. “This gives me so much hope and pride for the future.”

The VCU Brandcenter students won the overall challenge by taking the top spot in the final round of competition, going up against winning teams from two other divisions. The VCU team, which developed a cloud-based smart platform solution for small businesses, had earlier secured its spot in the finals by winning the AT&T division.

Participating teams in the AT&T division were challenged to present a detailed plan for addressing questions on emerging technology and how AT&T can better connect its cloud-hosting services with mobility applications to meet the needs of small businesses.

The VCU team proposed an innovative new tool to help small business owners take the mystery out of cloud computing.  The solution would function as a “digital business partner,” simplifying cloud and mobile applications to increase productivity and efficiency, while providing small and midsize businesses with the analytical firepower of a larger company at a fraction of the cost.

In addition to team Brandslam, two other Brandcenter teams finished in the semifinals for the competition, giving the program three of the top 15 spots in the challenge. Clinehens noted that fact with pride and thanked faculty members for working with their schedules and fellow students for occasionally picking up the slack on other projects.

“We’re really happy that we could bring this home,” Clinehens said. “We believe that this belongs to everyone at the Brandcenter.”

The first, second and third place winners were announced last week during a special event in New York. Each of the teams rang the New York Stock Exchange closing bell on Friday.

Moore said that the Innovation Challenge victory would help Brandcenter students explain to others who did not know the program what the Brandcenter is all about. While the Brandcenter, which has been ranked the top program of its kind in the country by multiple sources, has prestige in the advertising industry, it does not yet have the mainstream recognition of the country’s top-ranked M.B.A. programs.

“We all gain from this,” Moore said.

Rick Boyko, director of the VCU Brandcenter, was unable to attend the event, but Sommardahl passed along his congratulations, as well as those from Just and Mike Hughes, president and creative director of the Martin Agency and chairman of the VCU Brandcenter Board of Directors.

“You have demonstrated to everyone that not only do our students think differently, but our collaborative curriculum is unlike any other,” Boyko said.

Scheeler said the prominence that the victory affords the Brandcenter and VCU will also help attract attention to the local area and its roster of innovative businesses.

“You’ve helped the rest of the world understand the kind of great stuff that we’re doing here in Richmond,” Scheeler said.

AT&T’s involvement in the Innovation Challenge is spearheaded through its Innovation Group and its crowd-sourcing and collaboration program, The Innovation Pipeline (TIP). As part of the program, AT&T has reached outside its employee base to tap the minds of top students and help support the next generation of business leaders.

Thompson-Kemp, who provided the winners with a large, commemorative check, expressed admiration for both the students’ work and their academic home.

“Innovation is in the DNA at AT&T,” Thompson-Kemp said. “To come here to this wonderful space where you bring innovation to life is inspiring.”

Team Brandslam next will be honored on Saturday when VCU President Michael Rao recognizes the group at halftime of the Rams’ men’s basketball game.