Innovation Challenge Finals - continued

We got seated in the conference hall. It resembled the lecture theaters at ISB but slightly bigger, even bigger than the max lt. The program was initiated by Mr. Philip Sommer, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs, Darden School of Business.

After this there was a brief presentation on OPEN. To decide which team will go first, chits with the names of the teams were kept in a Santa cap and judges were asked to pull out one. The first opportunity went to one of the teams from University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler). They made a good start but I felt that the team that went first has some disadvantage, everyone including the judges were warming up but Kami and Nicole made a very good start. We were the fourth team to present, just before lunch. Rao did the presentation and he did a great job. We felt that we did a good job, our idea was the best among the presentations made till then.

The best presentation on Day 1 was done by University of California at Berkeley (Haas) team. Rashid Ahmed and Alexandra Levich did the presentation and they did an awesome job. Rashid was particularly impressive and he handled the questions really well. I thought that they were the best that day. LBS team did a innovative presentation though their idea was not that impressive. The team from University of Denver consisted of all experienced people and they too did a very good presentation. I met Rachel Kuhn from Kenan Flagler and learnt that she is going to be at ISB on exchange in Jan. She is already placed with Bain and Company and she exudes lot of confidence and is already looking like a consultant. The other team from ISB presented a totally different idea.

At the end of the day, we felt that we were in the top three but only the judges knew who was meeting their criteria. More about the day 2 and what actually happened in the next post