MIT Idea Competition

The assessment and evaluation of the Ideation course at KTH is based on the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) IDEAS competition.

Hosted annually since 2001, this competition for the members of the MIT community serves as a catalyst, not only for university-based education and inspiration, but its reach and influence extend far beyond the campus.

According to the MIT IDEAS site, "IDEAS participants have leveraged more than $1.3 million in follow-on funding. IDEAS projects have been carried out in more than 20 countries, serving the needs of thousands of people."

Take a look at some of the winning projects!

The Medici Effect Blog

Today, more than ever, it makes sense to start an enterprise with meaning. One of my favorite start-ups is one that is still young, but growing rapidly--and it was initiated by two women from my home-town of Linköping, Sweden. They had no clue about business--but plenty of heart, soul, motivation, and common sense. They also networked like crazy and understood their product and potential market extremely well.

Pernilla Molander wanted to help her visually impaired son to succeed in high school chemistry. That's the story.

You can read an excellent version of their story on The Medici Effect Blog.

And you can visit the company, BRIGHT of Sweden to learn more about this great company, its first product, and their plans for new products in the future.

Ali G on pitching an idea?

Inspiration comes from many sources. It's not easy to pitch ideas, especially those that are futurist or seemingly absurd. Conservative financiers are certainly going to want to hear a strong argument or "pitch" from anyone who wants to gain support or money to back a new idea. Ali G might have the right idea, but without demonstrating better knowledge and without delivering a few "facts", the idea is simply "not going to fly." Take a look:

Enjoy!

Doing what you know best

Last year, what might be considered an unlikely candiate for Microsoft's best idea of the year in the United States, turned out to be a group called the Mayhem Poets.

Here is the press release from Microsoft's website:

NEW YORK — March 13, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. announced today that the Mayhem Poets, a performance poetry group, is the winner of the Ultimate Challenge contest (http://www.ideawins.com), a nationwide search for the best small-business idea in America.

The group will receive $100,000 in startup capital, a New York storefront rent-free for one year, and a suite of software and services to help get its business running. The Mayhem Poets, from Jersey City, N.J., plan to open a spoken-word performance workshop and café that celebrates multiculturalism through education and workshops for children of all ages. At night, the café will turn into an open-mike space for spoken-word performances.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar07/03-13IdeaWinsWinnerMA.mspx


Watch their 3.5 minute-long idea presentation. It's fun, stimulating, somewhat informative and almost tells you what the idea will become.

24HourDotCom

Four years ago, two Swedish students from KTH and from the Stockholm School of Economics launched an idea and a company in 24 hours. Their company press release, dated 14 June 2004 is as follows:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Berlin, Germany -- June 14, 2004 -- The dotcom days are with us again as Adam Wern and Eric Wahlforss, two students from the Stockholm School of Economics and the Royal Institute of Technology, descended upon the Wizards of OS Conference in Berlin with the aim of creating a dotcom business from scratch in 24 hours.

The two charismatic Swedes succeeded in putting together a multi-disciplinary international team within a few hours, and went on to implement dozomo.com, a revolutionary entrant into the search engine market.
The service, which acts as a meta-search engine, has ambitious plans to take on the incumbent google.com and believes its innovative technology will help it become the market leader within the coming year.

The business is now being auctioned off on eBay as a form of IPO and reached almost $1000 within a few hours and is expected to skyrocket by the time the auction finishes on Tuesday 1700 GMT.

For more information, take a look at http://24hdc.com

Posted by tav at June 14, 2004 07:30 PM


Eric Wahlforss posted a video "documentary" of their entrepreneurial adventure:
See the story!

What is Ideation?

i·de·a·tion

n.
the process of forming and relating ideas


I`de*a"tion\, n. The faculty or capacity of the mind for forming ideas; the exercise of this capacity; the act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought.

The whole mass of residua which have been accumulated . . . all enter now into the process of ideation. --J. D. Morell.


i·de·ate (ī'dē-āt')
v. i·de·at·ed, i·de·at·ing, i·de·ates

v. tr.
To form an idea of; imagine or conceive: "Such characters represent a grotesquely blown-up aspect of an ideal man . . . if not realizable, capable of being ideated" (Anthony Burgess).

v. intr.
To conceive mental images; think.

i'de·a'tion n., i'de·a'tion·al adj.



Source: ideation. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved August 19, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ideation