Twelve teams of USD students from across schools and disciplines competed in the Inaugural USD Innovation Challenge, a campus-wide entrepreneurship competition held April 14 at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.
The live pitch competition launched as a partnership between the Knauss School of Business, the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering and the USD Changemaker Hub. It was founded to repurpose the schools’ recurring pitch competitions — the Venture Vetting Pitch Competition (Knauss), the Torero Entrepreneurship Challenge (Shiley-Marcos) and the Global Social Innovation Challenge (Kroc) — into a single event meant to highlight and recognize student-driven business models, technology and social innovations.
“Here at USD, innovation and entrepreneurship are crucial components of our students' learning experience,” says Kroc Associate Director of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Andrew Biros, who served as emcee of the event. “We aim to equip them with the skills and mindsets necessary to create, innovate and solve real-world problems so that more people and our planet can flourish.”
Twenty-eight teams applied for the challenge, of which 12 semi finalists were invited to make their pitch to judges. Six finalists were selected from the group and gave their final pitch to a group of judges on stage at the Joan B. Kroc Theatre. On the line: $20,000 in funding from The Larry Kull Endowed Student Award in Engineering and Entrepreneurship. The award was established in honor of the memory of Dr. Kull to provide student awards in perpetuity. This is the third school year the fund has been awarded, and the first time it has been awarded campus-wide.
Ascender Systems, pitched by Knauss MBA student Jorge Muniz, was awarded top prize and $15,000. Dapple, pitched by fellow Knauss MBA student Samantha Lurie, received $2,000. Kroc masters student Aakriti Adhikari (Embrace The Red) and Shiley-Marcos undergraduate Honorebel Walker (SpaceTime Social) were each awarded $1,000 and Kroc masters student Lydia Halcott (Rest Up!) and Knauss undergraduate Joseph Schechtman (Meat Link) were each awarded $500.
Additionally, Muniz and Adhikari were both selected to represent USD at the 2023 Finals of the Fowler Global Social Innovation Challenge, an annual competition co-organized by USD and University of St. Thomas, where students from around the world gather to compete for seed funding for ideas grounded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“The USD Innovation Challenge is a part of ongoing strategic collaboration across USD — our shared goal is to ensure that students are prepared to innovate and succeed in an ever-changing and competitive world,” says Biros.
— Story by Matthew Piechalak, photos by Tony Campos
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April 19, 2023 at 04:48AM
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