Skild CEO Anil Rathi announced, “The Skild platform now has such a detailed list of menu items to help our contest administrators monitor their competitions that virtually any type of contest is capable using our contest management software. I’m proud of what our team has developed and I look forward to seeing what types of contest ideas our partners create.”

Version 2.0 offers many new features like customizable registration forms and entry forms, flexible Content Management System (CMS) messaging, customizable judging scorecards, public widgets, and multi-language support.

This latest version of their contest software features entry forms that can accept various types of uploaded files such as video, audio, images, and many more. Their online contest management software also allows for multi-phase entries, offering contestants the ability to submit different or altered entry forms during subsequent phases of the competition.

With Skild’s new contest software release, administrators can author e-mails and system instructions to align with the language of their competitions. They’ve also structured judging scorecards to empower judges to evaluate and critique contest entries with comments or defined, weighted criteria.

Public Voting is another interesting new feature of their online contest management software. The platform can publicly display contestants’ entries so visitors can vote, comment, and even share the entries on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to the new software release, Skild also unveiled three new “per use” licensing options. Starting at $3,500, each plan offers the flexibility to adapt the platform to a customer’s unique needs, including a “white label” option for agencies and brands that want more creative control of the user experience. Interested parties are encouraged to visit www.skild.com or call 877-807-5453 for more information.

About Skild
Skild® is a software service that enables brand marketers and digital strategists to create and manage online campaigns. From awards and philanthropic prizes to crowdsourcing contests and promotional challenges, for 50,000 or 50 participants, Skild makes the hard part of running online contests, easy.

Organizations such as Autodesk, GE, the National Science Foundation and countless others rely on Skild’s contest management platform to engage audiences across the web. Founded in 2002, Skild is a privately-held company headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. Learn more at www.skild.com.

First Lady, Michelle Obama, promotes the ASAP Innovation Competition

What? ASAP Innovation Competition - a nationwide competition designed to identify and reward innovative and impactful physical activity programs and technologies with excellent promise to motivate quality physical activity at school and beyond.

Who?  Schools, School Districts, Teachers, Technology Developers… people like you with a passion to make a difference and get our nation’s students active and healthy.

Two (2) Competition Categories

1. “School Programs”: Innovative in-school physical activity programs
   • $25,000 prizes for Regional Winners
   • $100,000 prizes for National Winners
2. “Technology Innovation”: Technology applications that motivate and support daily physical activity at school and beyond
   • $50,000 prizes to fund school-based pilot of winning technologies
   • Opportunity to present winning technology at the 2012 national Health 2.0 conference

When? Now through April 2nd, 2012 at 11:59pm EDT – Hurry!  You only have a few days left to enter!

For more information, visit http://www.activeschoolsasap.org/innovation-competition.

And, once again, we’re proud to say, this competition is powered by Skild.

If you are a post-secondary student enrolled at an accredited U.S. or international college or university, then you have until 11:59 PM Eastern Time tonight to register for the Innovate 4 Healthcare Challenge.  Once registered, students have until March 6th to submit their entries.

Hosted by the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business (Smith School) and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. (JJSI), the Innovate 4 Healthcare Challenge is asking students to design a plan to strengthen patient engagement with healthcare providers using information technology.  They must employ their creativity, research skills, business acumen, knowledge of health transformation issues, and best practices to conceptualize an innovative health information technology solution and business model to effectively engage patients and health care providers.

Criteria for judging includes:

• Ability to drive patient provider engagement for improved health outcomes – 40 points
• Demonstrated market potential of solution with a sustainable model – 20 points
• Innovation/originality – 20 points
• Alignment to J&J business(es) – 10 points
• Quality of presentation – 10 points

“What are the prizes,” you ask?

The team that wins the final round will receive $20,000. The two runner-up teams will receive $5,000 each. All teams participating in the final round will have the unique opportunity to network with leaders in the field of health IT.

What are you waiting for?  You’ve got about 9 hours left to register.

University of Waterloo students were named the winners of the 2012 RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge. The university team was awarded $20,000 by a panel of RBC senior executives after presenting their idea for an innovation that will help Canadians at different life stages to achieve financial security.

“We’re thrilled to be chosen as the winners of the 2012 Next Great Innovator Challenge – it’s a great honour. This national competition has been a winning experience in itself,” said John Zupancic on behalf of the team. “Not only did we network with RBC executives and win a great prize, we will also be interviewing with an RBC recruiter. In today’s competitive job market, the Challenge has been an invaluable opportunity to get our foot in the door and have a taste of the corporate experience.”

The winning team focused on mobile banking and showcased a new opportunity for RBC to help Canadians use this platform to achieve their financial goals. The team’s submission will help ensure that young Canadians do not have to compromise when seeking financial advice through non-traditional methods.

Since its start in 2006, the RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge has received almost 600 post-secondary student team submissions and over 2,200 students have participated. The five finalist teams this year were selected from the 21 schools that competed across Canada. A team from Queen’s University was the runner-up, winning $10,000; while the other three team finalists – two from Queen’s and one from the Rotman School of Management – each received $5,000. For the first time since the inception of the challenge, all finalists will have the opportunity to interview with an RBC recruiter.

“Each year I’m more impressed with the calibre of our students and their innovative concepts and ideas,” said Morteza Mahjour, chief information & operations officer, RBC, and a judge of this year’s competition. “At RBC, innovation means constantly challenging the status quo – looking for new ways to approach our work and bringing those ideas to life. The Innovation Challenge brings us fresh and diverse perspectives, and the opportunity to meet young, talented people who are eager to contribute to our innovative culture.”

Numerous ideas put forward by competing students over the last six years have been tested and streamlined in the RBC Experiential Lab, and some have been developed for use at RBC. One of RBC’s most popular online expense tracking, budgeting and saving tools, myFinanceTracker, was inspired by a past submission.

Challenge submissions were evaluated by the RBC Applied Innovation team and narrowed down to the top 15 proposals. A panel of RBC executives then selected the top five entries as finalists.

For more information on the RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge, visit nextgreatinnovator.com, follow on Twitter @rbcinnovator or become a fan on Facebook.

SOURCE RBC

Video with caption: “Video: Meet the winning team of the 2012 RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge: the Inspirators from the University of Waterloo.”. Video available at: http://bit.ly/wEInlP

Image with caption: “The finalists of the 6th annual RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge join Morteza Mahjour, Chief Information & Operations Officer, and Avi Pollock, Vice President, Innovation & Strategic Planning, after the awards ceremony. (CNW Group/RBC)”. Image available at: http://bit.ly/xpDgt0

Image with caption: “The winners of the 2012 RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge, the Inspirators, accept their $20,000 prize. (CNW Group/RBC)”. Image available at: http://bit.ly/x1ijgw

January 27, 2012, New York, NY – VCU Brandcenter students Jennifer Clinehens, Cody Pate, Katlyn Williams and Ryan Dowling (AKA “Team Brandslam”) were crowned Champions of the 9^th Annual Innovation Challenge® and received a $20,000 prize check from competition prize sponsors Skild, AT&T, GE and Syngenta.  The announcement took place live on Wall Street at the New York Stock Exchange where students from the top three teams rang the closing bell, ending trading for the week.

The Innovation Challenge®, powered by competition software company, Skild, offers MBA students the opportunity to design presentations that answer questions from leading corporate sponsors.  The questions are often structured to help these companies find strategic, innovative solutions.  This year’s Innovation Challenge® questions asked students for conceptual ideas in Strategy / Business Modeling (sponsored by AT&T); Marketing (sponsored by Syngenta), and Product Development (sponsored by GE).

To claim the top spot, Team Brandslam’s submission, answering a question architected from AT&T, successfully rose above nearly 178 teams consisting of nearly 800 MBA & graduate students from over 40 universities in 25 different countries.

“Innovation Challenge was a fantastic experience; equal parts challenging, inspiring, and lots of fun. It gave us a taste of the challenges real companies face, and how open these companies are to our generation’s passion, dedication, and drive,” said Jennifer Clinehens, Leader of Team Brandslam.

Second and third place teams represented The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (answering Syngenta’s question), and Chapman University (answering GE’s question).  These teams split the remaining $5,000.

Because the program has been such a success with both students and corporate sponsors, Skild intends to expand the Innovation Challenge® beyond an annual event.  Look for additional competitions to be announced later this year.

About the Innovation Challenge®

The Innovation Challenge® is the world’s largest and most established business innovation competition. The brightest and most creative MBA and graduate students from universities all over the globe have been matched with leading companies such as including American Express, Shell Oil, IBM and Google who have opened their doors to new ideas and fresh perspectives to real-world challenges.

Since it’s inception, the contest has garnered participation from over 8,000 students representing more than 100 of the top rated MBA programs.  These students have generated over 1,700 business plans for more than 60 sponsors.

About Skild
Offering its services for 10 years, Skild (formerly known as Idea Crossing) is a fast growing, privately held company. Skild started out in 2002 with the creation of the Innovation Challenge®, their own annual contest brand targeted at university students.  Innovation Challenge® is the largest competition of its kind in the world, which consistently unites hundreds of teams from the top 100 MBA programs with some of the biggest global brands to solve real-world business challenges.

Since 2002, Skild has helped dozens of organizations build and manage their challenge programs. Today, Skild provides all the tools and knowledge “skill-based” contest producers need to run effective awards, prizes and promotional contests. Skild’s software and expertise has attracted an impressive array of clients, consisting of next-generation technology leaders, flagship Fortune 500 companies, and some of the world’s most ambitious non-profits.

These teams aren’t competing in stadiums with thousands of cheering fans. They’re developing innovative business ideas to give small business owners with limited IT budgets the tools available to the pros. AT&T is ready to tap into that pool of creativity as a sponsor of The Innovation Challenge®, an annual contest pitting MBA teams in a battle of innovation and creative thinking.

“The Innovation Challengebrings together a very deep talent pool of next-generation business leaders,” said Anil Rathi, CEO & Founder of Skild, the contest organizer. “Key to its success is the participation of companies like AT&T, which helps create an experience that uniquely addresses real-world business and social innovation challenges.”

This year’s five finalists in AT&T’s challenge group feature teams representing Virginia Commonwealth University – University Brandcenter, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, the Haas School of Business at University of California at Berkeley, Harvard Business School and the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.

Participating teams researched, brainstormed and presented a detailed plan for addressing questions on emerging technology and how AT&T can better connect its cloud-hosting services with mobility applications and services to meet the needs of small businesses. After several rounds of judging by AT&T and industry experts, the finalists were selected from among the 60 MBA teams competing.

The winning team will be announced in early December and awarded prizes that include cash and exposure to some of AT&T’s top executives and key innovators. AT&T’s involvement in The Innovation Challenge is spearheaded through its own internal crowdsourcing and collaboration program called . As part of this, AT&T has reached outside its internal parameters to tap the minds of top students.

“AT&T’s TIP program and The Innovation Challenge are similar in that they both bring together great minds to collaborate and elevate the best ideas to the top,” said Sam Zellner, AT&T’s Executive Director of Innovation. “Our role with the Challenge is demonstrative of how we can collaborate outside traditional lines by connecting with tomorrow’s leaders to help shape the future of technology.”

Jiffy Lube International and Samsung Electronics among corporate sponsors that presented 2010 Innovation Challenge problem statements

Los Angeles, CA – December 23, 2010

Leading skill-based contest agency and software provider, Idea Crossing, announced today that Team Haastile Takeover from the Haas School of Business from the University of California at Berkeley is the winner of the 8th Annual Innovation Challenge. The Innovation Challenge requires MBA student-led teams of 3-5 graduate level students from across all disciplines to clearly articulate imaginative solutions to real-world issues. Other finalists included teams from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. The 2010 Innovation Challenge, the largest competition of it’s kind, was developed in partnership with forward-looking corporate sponsors like Samsung Electronics and Jiffy Lube International, Inc. (JLI).

The Berkeley MBA team, consisting of Rahul Bijor, Blake Holland, Brandon Piper, Nancy Unsworth, and Scott Van Brunt, competed in the business model innovation category. “Our proposal was titled ‘In Tune by Jiffy Lube®’ and involved creating an online vehicle maintenance management portal for car owners,” said team leader Blake Holland.

“For more than 30 years, Jiffy Lube has been an integral part of the North American driving experience and has been committed to supporting drivers with fast, quality preventive maintenance services,” says Jim Webster, Strategic Innovation & Development Manager for JLI. “To win in the marketplace and maintain our leadership position in the Fast Lube category, innovation is imperative.”

To win, the Berkeley team’s concept plan first had to be selected as one of 15 semi-finalists during a two round evaluation by more than 100 business professors, innovation experts, entrepreneurs, and sponsors from previous years’ Innovation Challenges. Three of the 15 semi-finalists, 1 from each challenge category, were chosen as finalists after a web-enabled presentation to a committee made up of key executive staff from each of the sponsors. On Friday December 17th, Team Haastile Takeover from UC Berkeley was chosen as the overall winner after live head to head presentations by all three finalists in front of a small, select and diverse panel of innovation experts.

“We were very impressed with all of the submissions received and value the fresh perspectives on how we can better meet the needs of Generation Y drivers,” continued Webster. “We thank each and every team for developing and submitting their thoughtful and innovative proposals. We congratulate Team Haastile Takeover from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business for their winning submission.”

“We are thrilled that we were able to bring it home for Haas and Berkeley, we would definitely encourage others to participate in the spring competition,” says Holland. “We had a great time working together and learned a lot from the feedback we received.”

This fall’s Innovation Challenge featured more than 100 teams made up of 500 graduate level students from more than 50 of the top graduate universities in the US. The competition, conducted entirely online, challenged students to innovate in one of three categories: social innovation, business model innovation (presented by Jiffy Lube International, Inc.), and marketing & product development (presented by Samsung Electronics). The 3 finalists split a prize purse of $25,000 and select teams from throughout the semester long competition have since been invited to present their solutions directly to the sponsors’ executive committees.

This was Idea Crossing’s eighth Innovation Challenge and it was open to all U.S.-based MBA candidates. Teams ranged in size from two to five members and team leaders were encouraged to recruit fellow graduate students from cross-disciplinary programs. Over a three-month period the teams researched, brainstormed and refined new ways to approach the sponsors’ unique challenges.

Launched in 2002, the Innovation Challenge has become the premier business competition attracting Fortune 500 sponsors like American Express, Hilton Hotels, IBM and Harley-Davidson. “What the Innovation Challenge offers, that no one else can, is the opportunity to tap directly into the brightest minds of tomorrow, today. What we have created, and proved, is that through structured innovation competitions almost any business obstacle can be overcome. We not only offer solutions to challenging business questions, but the best and brightest untapped talent pool on the planet,” said Anil Rathi, Idea Crossing CEO.

The Innovation Challenge is currently preparing for its Spring 2011 competition, which will reintroduce international student participation. To learn more about the Innovation Challenge and how it can benefit you, please go to: http://www.innovationchallenge.com or contact Asher Spittler at asher(at)innovationchallenge(dot)com.

About Idea Crossing:

Idea Crossing was founded in 2002 along with the launch of the inaugural Innovation Challenge®. Leveraging expertise and lessons learned from running their own competitions, Idea Crossing set out to help others streamline the complexities of administering their challenge programs. Since 2002, more than 50 organizations have relied on Idea Crossing for their competition design and management needs. Today, Idea Crossing empowers producers of “skill-based” competitions with the tools and resources needed to run effective awards programs, incentive prizes and promotional challenges. Idea Crossing’s competition management solution called Skild® provides the back office software needed to design, produce, and operate truly intelligent competitions. Idea Crossing has been featured in publications such as CNN Money, INC Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, in addition to white papers on incentive prizes published by MIT Innovation, Patricia Seybold Group and McKinsey & Company. For more information on Idea Crossing or Skild, please visit http://www.skild.com.