This past weekend, the University Student Center was filled with students from across the Tampa Bay area for a 20-hour overnight innovation gauntlet.
Students from USF Tampa, Eckerd College and the University of Tampa were all in attendance.
The event was the first of its kind at USFSP and attracted three prominent organizations based in the Tampa Bay area: Jabil, Valpak and the Rowdies. Each company had a specific problem to solve.
Cash prizes were awarded to the top three teams.
The teams, usually four to five members large, were paired with a specific problem to work on through the evening.
The room became a blur of activity. Large brown sheets of paper for mental maps were placed on the wall, and the room was covered in sticky notes.
At the start of the competition, a tool-kit crafted by the Royal Innovation Design Company, the keynote sponsor for the event, was released, containing more than 50 slides of problem solving strategies.
The main strategy implemented was the “Design Thinking Process,” which was a chart intended to help teams thinking through their problem.
It entails empathy for consumers, defining the problem, ideas for solutions, constructing a prototype and the final testing stages.
The second most important design process was the Triple Bottom Line: people, profit, planet. This design method had students not only focus on the prosperity of the company but also the welfare of the community and the Earth.
A panel of seven judges with a representative from Jabil and Valpak came the second day. Each team had three minutes to pitch, and a two-minute question and answer session.
Nineteen teams entered the gauntlet. Nineteen teams presented in morning. Nineteen teams took the task of craft the distance.
The companies and the problems:
Jabil
Based in St. Petersburg, Fla., Jabil is an international manufacturing and design company with a global supply chain comprised of 23 plants in over ninety countries.
The Problem: Today, electronics have become a necessity. The tide of electronic waste is rapidly engulfing landfills and poisoning our environment with heavy metals while simultaneously wasting precious metals. How might we incentivize the reversal of the wave of e-waste? Jabil asks how to get college students involved in expanding the recycling process in opposition to exporting our waste to third world countries.
Valpak
Valpak is a coupon distribution giant. The gist of their service is to connect customers to local businesses in their markets by mailing coupon books with an array of coupons pertinent to that persons surrounding market. The company then makes money when the coupons are redeemed by the businesses that are attracting new wealth.
The Problem: Valpak struggles to connect to a younger market place, specifically the millennials. It was up to the innovators to design a prototype or system that could activate this marketplace.
Tampa Bay Rowdies
The St. Petersburg based Tampa Bay Rowdies are members of the North American Soccer League and are becoming larger by the day. Since their 2010 debut after a long hiatus the team has been striving to perpetuate their presence in the Tampa Bay Area. The stadium recently underwent $1.5 million of repairs.
The Problem: The Rowdies don’t only want to be a successful sports club, they also wish become bastions for social improvement. Their main focus is impoverished children. Over 200,000 kids in the Tampa Bay area live in poverty and in 2012 nearly 25 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line. They asked innovators to create a method by which direct interaction and enrichment of misfortunate youth might be achieved.
