Innovate@BU is holding its first school-wide entrepreneurial competition this fall, allowing students to submit business or project ideas with the hope of winning a $1,000 first place prize.
The “Idea Cup” was established to encourage student innovation, according to the Innovate@BU website, and to highlight BU’s best and most creative ideas. The competition will be held biannually, with the first two dates set for Dec. 13 and April 22, 2019.
Ahlea Isabella, marketing and communications manager for Innovate@BU, said the competition was created to showcase the entrepreneurial and innovative prowess of the BU student body.
“It’s meant to not only highlight all the different innovative ideas students are working on,” Isabella said, “whether it’s in class, whether it’s a venture of their own, whether it’s with a student group — and not just highlight those, but award them.”
U.S. News and World Report named BU “one of the most innovative national universities,” according to the Idea Cup website.
Although the university has held competitions for startups in the past, Isabella said, what distinguishes the Idea Cup from other events is that the cup is open to many different ideas and projects.
“It’s an opportunity to give students more than one opportunity to highlight and showcase the ventures or projects that they’re working on,” Isabella said. “… This is just a competition where all of these things can finally combine.”
Isabella said the competition also highlights the diversity of student ideas on campus.
“I think [the Idea Cup] says that there’s ideas happening in all different realms,” she said. “It’s not just startups, it’s not just tech ideas— some of these are social impact, some of these are ideas that started out as a class project and they’re turning it into something more, something they can use in the community, something they can use in their career.”
Innovate@BU Social Innovation Program intern Jenna Crawford wrote in an email that the Idea Cup is unique because of its availability to all BU students and its emphasis on community.
“We believe that everyone working innovatively benefits from having diverse teams and networks to pull on,” Crawford wrote. “And creativity doesn’t have preferences; you can be doing creative work in QST or CFA, for instance, but also in SPH, CAS, STH, MET, COM and the list goes on!”
In her first semester at BU, Crawford said she has been inspired by the drive students display.
“From designing technology to [improving] automated processes in public health, to using principles of design to empower voices on the margins …” Crawford wrote. “I really feel like BU students want to effect positive change in the world, and they are preparing to do so as self-starters, entrepreneurs, and creatives.”
Kruti Kanojia, a first-year graduate student studying business administration, said the Idea Cup helps students realistically plan their business ventures while receiving genuine feedback on their ideas.
“The Idea Cup is just a good reality check to make sure that the business that you’re thinking about is worth pursuing,” Kanojia said. “I’m an MBA, I’ve been working for 10 years, and I should know this stuff, but to see it in front of you is still really helpful.”
Kanojia said the Idea Cup encourages spending the $1,000 prize money in the most beneficial way for one’s startup.
“If you are focused enough, and you go through the process that they put you through, you know exactly how to spend that thousand dollars in the most impactful way,” Kanojia said. “Before I had even gone through this, if someone were to give me a thousand dollars, I wouldn’t know exactly the best way to spend it.”
