VCU Brandcenter Team Captures International Innovation Challenge

A team of VCU Brandcenter students has captured the top prize in the Innovation Challenge®, a tough international competition that pits the world’s brightest graduate school student teams against one another to find creative technology solutions for businesses.

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 the other sponsored divisions. The victory comes with a cash prize of $20,000. The VCU team, which developed a cloud-based smart platform solution for small businesses, had earlier secured its spot representing the AT&T division by beating out 60 teams from around the world.

“After interviewing a handful of small business owners, we quickly learned that many didn’t understand the full value that cloud services could provide,” said the VCU team spokesperson Jennifer Clinehens, a creative brand management student at VCU Brandcenter. “Thanks to AT&T, our team was given an early look into the kinds of considerations that real businesses must address when deciding to incorporate cloud computing. This helped us to develop a tool from the small business owner’s perspective, something that gave them the opportunity to take control of their information.”

In addition to Clinehens, team “Brandslam” students include Ryan Dowling, a creative technology student; Cody Pate, an art direction student; and Katlyn Williams, a copywriting student. Don Just, a Brandcenter professor, is the team’s faculty adviser.

Other Brandcenter teams participated in the Innovation Challenge in divisions sponsored by Syngenta and GE and also thrived. In fact, three Brandcenter teams reached the challenge's semfinals.

"Having three of 15 semifinalists and ultimately winning the entire competition is a wonderful testament to the VCU Brandcenter's unique collaborative curriculum," said Rick Boyko, director of the VCU Brandcenter.

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.

"This win serves to validate the Brandcenter's focus on developing unexpected consumer insights and then using those insights to craft imaginative strategies that enhance the market power of brands," Just said. "Time and again the school's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration in solving problems has proven to be a powerful tool in a marketplace that is moving at warp speed. Here a great deal of energy is expended searching for big, business-building ideas, innovative ideas that resonate with today's consumers and build brand equity. And there is no better example of this approach at work than can be seen in the winning effort of our Innovation Challenge teams."

VCU’s team will share the grand prize of $20,000. The first, second and third place winners were announced today during a special event in New York.  All the teams will ring the New York Stock Exchange closing bell this afternoon.

“Participants in the Innovation Challenge are the business leaders of tomorrow,” said Anil Rathi, CEO & Founder of contest organizer Skild. “Collaboration with companies like AT&T is critical to providing insight into core technologies so that our teams can come up with innovative solutions to real-life problems.”

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.

“We’re always looking for opportunities to encourage new, innovative technology solutions and thrive on the creativity provided by graduate students,” said Sam Zellner, AT&T’s Executive Director of Innovation. “The VCU team’s innovative approach to simplifying adoption of cloud computing for small businesses has a lot of potential and we’re thrilled to have been a collaborator in their winning submission.”