June 9, 2009

Innovation Challenge Brazil





As you probably know by now through this blog, I truly believe marketers can benefit from a more collaborative approach to innovation. So, when Insper - one of Brazil's leading business schools - told us that they were bringing the Innovation Challenge to Brazil, we immediately decided to become one of the corporate sponsors.

Innovation Challenge is the world's largest competition involving MBA students who compete to present innovation ideas to sponsoring companies. Each company posts a specific challenge and students from around the country team up to generate innovative solutions that meet the brief. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to work on real case studies and companies have the opportunity of interacting with the next generation of leaders who will certainly bring a fresh perspective to their business models.

For two weeks, teams from different parts of Brazil will research, discuss and prepare their business plans. Submissions will be evaluated by a specialist panel leading to a final presentation on the Isper campus.


This initiative reinforces our commitment here at PepsiCo Brazil to support a more inclusive collaborative innovation process that started over a year ago with an online panel we have with 40 college students helping us with our brands targeting millenials.

Can't wait to see the results.

1 comment:

Anil Rathi said...

Carlos,

Thanks for your post. My name is Anil and I am the Founder & CEO of Idea Crossing. We created the Innovation Challenge competitions in 2003 and after six years of running and powering the global competition we decided to start franchising the format, concept and software platform to other countries around the world. Innovation Challenge - Brazil is the first franchise and others are being planned.

I visited Brazil in March and had a wonderful time. I have no doubt that Insper will execute the franchise at the same caliber as the global competition and create a transformational experience for all participants including Pepsico, Bunge, the most innovative students in Brazil and judges. After all innovation competitions and prizes are first and foremost about bringing together innovative people...and Brazil has many of them.

I hope you find the Innovation Challenge experience beneficial to Pepsico in more ways than one. If there is anything I can do please let me know.

Sincerely,
Anil