[ibimage==24964==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center]This week has been dubbed Innovation Week at University of Chicago – and for good reason. Finals for New Venture Challenge, Social New Venture Challenge and Mobile App Challenge are all happening this week, in addition to the UChicago Innovation Showcase.
The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation has put together this weeklong celebration for students and the broader UChicago community. You can register for any (or all!) of the week’s events without feeling glued to your chair for the entire day – most events allow attendees to drop in and leave as their schedules allow.
It all kicks off Wednesday at the Harper Center with the third annual Social New Venture Challenge, in which six impact-focused teams will compete for $50,000 in cash prizes. The finalists, which were narrowed down from about 40 applications, were just announced last week and include: BluFlame Ventures, Edulink, Malone Greene Restaurant Corp., Project SAM, Purple Binder and Circle of Strut. Winners will be announced during a lunch reception around noon.
Thursday brings a full load of events from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Finalists will compete in the 17th annual New Venture Challenge at the Harper Center for an increased $100,000 cash prize and the chance to possibly become as prominent as NVC alums Grubhub or Braintree.
“The day of the finals is a really fun and exciting event; It’s fast-paced, even though you’re sitting in this room for a long time, it doesn’t feel like that at all,” Tracey Elder, Associate Director of Marketing at Polsky, said. “It’s kind of like going to Demo Day for TechStars. We have a lot of competition. No one’s a shoe-in; you have to work really hard. The teams that have advanced to the finals have shown they have the most promise for being an actual viable business.”
The ten finalists (which were chosen from 93 applications, 30 of which completed a classroom course) include: Aeos Technology, Arc Mobile, Cancer IQ , Intelligent Widgets, Khelo, Kishr, Matchist, Project FixUp, Wit Interactive and Yella. The winners of New Venture Challenge will be announced at the Innovation Showcase Thursday night where more than 35 student groups and startups from various parts of the university will be featured.
Not to be forgotten in Thursday’s packed schedule is the Mobile App Challenge, in which the top three finalists will vie for a $10,000 prize. The Mobile App Challenge, which was developed with the help of UChicago IT Services, spurred over 113 teams to apply for the program. The IT team helped to develop prototypes for finalists Video Prototype, MyRoots and HealthSpotr as well as for other semi-finalists.
Topped off with a celebratory breakfast on Friday, Innovation Week has grown from just trying “to get people involved as much as possible to show what’s happening across the university,” Elder said, to an energetic three-day showcase of entrepreneurial spirit at UChicago.
