Entrepreneurship Week Event to Challenge Student Creativity, Innovation
Contact: Jesse Moriarity, 581-1427; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — UMaine students will be asked to think outside the box during Global Entrepreneurship Week Nov. 12-19, as they create uncommon new uses for everyday objects like post-it notes or rubber bands.
They’ll be competing with teams of other college students from at least 55 institutions from 12 countries, participating in the Web-based Global Innovation Tournament, which poses the question, “How would you change the world with an everyday object?”
Using such objects as rubber bands, post-it notes or paper clips, student teams will stretch their imaginations coming up with new ways to create something practical, educational, political, humanitarian, or just fun and novel, says Jesse Moriarity, coordinator of UMaine’s Foster Student Innovation Center, which is hosting the event on the UMaine campus.
The challenge is simple: teams of students from all over the UMaine campus are invited to compete by creating value with an everyday object. The mystery object will be revealed on Wednesday, Nov. 12, and students will have four days to put together a short video showing how they created value with the mystery object. Value is not necessarily monetary; it could be artistic or social.
The annual event was founded three years ago at Stanford University and has been including more college campuses around the world since then.
Videos of previous winners are available on Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Week Web page (http://eweek.stanford.edu/2008/winners.html). Winning creations have included: rubber bands used to identify locally grown produce in grocery stores; a rubber band-link jump rope; a giant rubber band frame system on which students attach their “secrets” anonymously; an infomercial parody about an elastic band product to prevent shoe laces from becoming untied; and short dramas about capital punishment and about condom use.
“Everyone we’ve talked with about it has been really excited,” says Moriarity. “On top of being a really fun challenge for students, it’s also a great way for them to learn more about the Innovation Center and what we have to offer.”
To assist students with creating short video productions about team creations and explanations of how they are to be used, Moriarity says audio-visual equipment will be available to students through Fogler Library or UMaine’s AV Services Department. On Nov. 13, the Innovation Center will offer a video-producing workshop to teach students about video-editing software.
Student entries will be uploaded to YouTube for review by a panel of judges. Web addresses linking to the UMaine entries will be emailed to Moriarity, and judges at UMaine will select the three best.
On Wednesday, Nov. 19, the Foster Student Innovation Center will host a screening party, at which winning videos will be announced and prizes awarded. Top videos will be entered in the Global Innovation Tournament.
Information about the contest, related Web links and the Foster Student Innovation Center are available on the center’s website (www.umaine.edu/innovation). The University Credit Union is sponsoring the Global Innovation Tournament activities at UMaine.