EAG GOOD PRACTICE: Microsoft Imagine Cup

Title Provide full title of the entrepreneurship education initiative

Microsoft Imagine Cup

The Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition. It provides an opportunity for students to use their creativity, passion and knowledge of technology to help solve global challenges and make a difference in the world. While competing for cash and prizes, students learn new skills, make new friends, and, quite possibly, change the world.

Now in its ninth year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to real world problems. Last year, more than 325,000 students from over 100 countries and regions entered the Imagine Cup competition. The Imagine Cup is one way Microsoft is encouraging the brightest young minds to join together and, using technology, take on the toughest problems facing our world today.

Contact

Lisa Harper Program Owner SR Audience Marketing Manager Microsoft Corporation Email: [email protected] Telephone: +1 (425) 7064900 X64900

Summary of initiative & budget Please provide a description of the initiative, including timeframe and annual implementation and running costs (max 300 words)

Registration for Imagine Cup opens in July and the competition takes places over the course of one year. Students register themselves in teams of 2-4 across five Core Competitions and four Challenges. Based upon the teams’ online submission of their project, teams advance through various rounds of the competition either online or through physical local or regional finals events until they are selected as worldwide finalists.

Students compete for cash prizes totaling $215,000 USD across five Core Competitions and four Challenges.

Objective(s)

The primary objectives are to inspire, prepare and shine the spotlight on the next generation of global innovators and entrepreneurs, and moreover, to showcase the value and importance of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) skills in making an impact in the world.

Impact, results Please provide summary details of the impact of the initiative and/or results to date More than 325,000 students ages 16 and up from 100 countries and regions entered the Imagine Cup 2010 competition. This year, the Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Finals with approximately 400 finalists will be held in from July 8-13, 2011. Previous locations of Worldwide Finals include: 2003 , ; 2007 , South ; 2004 Sao Paulo, ; 2008 , ; 2005 Yokohama, ; 2009 , ; 2006 , ; 2010 ,

Noteworthy successes coming out of the Imagine Cup competitions: Brazil: Team Trivial: Carlos Eduardo Rodrigues, Ivan Cordeiro Cardim and Madson Menezes Costa. Second place at the Worldwide 2006 Imagine Cup Finals.  Project Overview: Developed a system called vEye, which allows people with visual difficulties to orientate themselves in the streets. The solution includes pulse devices that send vibratory stimuli to indicate the follow direction and is integrated with their cell phone. The user tells the phone where he wants to go. The information is processed through software installed in the phone, which returns the answer in the form of vibrating signals.  The vEye project received investments from FINEP and they are working to launch it in Brazilian market.

Bulgaria: Team Mindpoint: Kiril Rusev, Raya Yunakova, Dilyan Rusev and Nikola Kosev (Technical University Sofia). Bulgarian National Champions in 2009.  Project Overview: Envision is a software product intended to assist teachers in their work and to involve students actively in the learning process. They developed a solution including two modules. The first, Administration, is to be used by teachers to easily create their lessons. The second, Presentation, is to be used in class to present the contents of the pre-created lessons.  June 2010: Envision is piloted in three elementary schools in Bulgaria. The goal is to analyze the results of the pilots and come up with funding to extend the project to more schools.  Sept. 2010: Country-wide distribution of Envision in Bulgaria.  Dec. 2010: More than 120 teachers have started using Envision in more than 50 schools. Considering the average class size in Bulgaria, this makes a student audience of about 2,600 children.

France: Aymeric Gaurat Apelli, Franois Beaussier, Guillaume Belmas and Vincent Vergonjeanne (EPITA University). Imagine Cup 2004 Worldwide Champions.  Project Overview: A low-cost smart home automation platform, built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, that enables its user to automate functions such as managing energy consumption, watching home security cameras from a Pocket PC or remotely controlling house functions.  After Imagine Cup, the team founded Kubojo in 2008 through the BizSpark program.  Kubojo develops games for Facebook and other social networking platforms (an Amazon WS sweet spot), just like Zynga or Playfish. They are currently building on the Microsoft stack, hosted by OVH, on Windows (the largest local hoster).  After a year of activity, they already have 6.5 million players and will close a first fiscal year around 2M$.

Malaysia: Ooi Boon Sheng (Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)). Malaysian National Champion in 2007.  Project Overview: An education materials platform called EdEx or Education Experience.  Boon Sheng used his Imagine Cup experience to establish his own startup shortly after he graduated from USM in 2007.  Sheng recruited his Imagine Cup teammates Ng Tiong and Eng Aik Kian to launch Web Bytes Sdn Bhd, a web-based IT services company that provides retail business software to micro-businesses, startups and small and medium chain resellers.  Boon Sheng attributes his journey into entrepreneurship to the Imagine Cup experiences, mentoring by USM lecturers and Microsoft staff, financial aid from the Multimedia Development Corp (through its MDeC pre-seed grant) and taking advantage of ISV-related initiatives by Microsoft such as its BizSpark program.  Dec. 2010: Web Bytes Sdn Bhd is awarded first prize in the Cloud Computing, Saas and Web Applications category at the inaugural TechVentures Conference. Hosted by MAD (Mobile Applications Developers) Incubator, the conference and platform to launch Malaysia’s Top 50 Startup Tech Ventures.

Russia: Team Inspiration: Stas Vonog, Nick Surin, Alexander Popov, and Ruslan Gilfanov (Moscow State University and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology). Imagine Cup 2005 Worldwide Champions.  Project Overview: Their project, called OmniMusic, allows musicians from remote locations to play together using Internet2 connectivity.  After taking part in Innovation Accelerator, Stas and Nick decided to continue their product, and invested the award money into further personal development—they took part in a Silicon Valley conference and were able to find financing for their project, which has been renamed Musigy.  Later on, Musigy technology was used to hold a 30-minute distributed jazz concert, “Jazz at the Speed of Light,” between US, and Ukraine, which was organized as a part of a large jazz festival. Their technology was demonstrated on CeBIT 2006, and presented to Bill Gates when he visited Moscow in 2007.

South Africa: Team Smile: Devin de Vries and Christopher King. Winners of the Innovation Accelerator Award at the Imagine Cup 2008 Worldwide Finals.  Project Overview: The “Where is My Transport” system is an application that allows bus commuters to plan routes and schedules using their cell phones. The project uses SMS, mapping technology and a database to let consumers find out when the next taxi or bus will reach them (www.whereismytransport.com).  After competing at Imagine Cup in Paris, de Vries and King traveled to Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus to explore how their solution could potentially turn into a business reality.  De Vries and King demonstrated the application, and explained their business plans, to a high-powered group that included the presidents of Microsoft and British Telecom International. They hope to be able to garner enough interest locally to implement the system, and possibly gain venture capital funding elsewhere to further develop and market the application.  De Vries and King hope the system will get more South Africans using public transport. Their goal now is to take their learning to the next level by creating a successful company.

United States: Team CarbonCart (Seattle Pacific University). Second place in the 2008 US Finals.  Project Overview: CarbonCart is an eco-conscious e-commerce Web site carrying the entire product inventory of online retail giant Amazon.com that allows consumers to carbon-neutralize their Internet shopping.  By placing their orders for Amazon.com products through CarbonCart.com, consumers can purchase carbon credits to pay for renewable energy initiatives, re-forestation or energy efficiency projects that offset the carbon dioxide generated in the shipping of their purchases.

Tu Nguyen, winner of the inaugural Imagine Cup in 2003.  Project Overview: Nguyen designed HotPad, a Point of Delivery Systems (iPODS) solution that runs on Pocket PC devices, which converts restaurant orders from English to Vietnamese for English-speaking waiters and Vietnamese-speaking chefs.  After winning the Imagine Cup, Nguyen received funding from the Walter Scott Foundation/ Peter Kiewit Institute with the incubation of his company. He was able to raise venture capital funding, and succeeded in over $1 million in self-funding from successful sales contracts and consulting.  Nguyen was able to raise $750,000 for the development of his latest product, the EDDS Vault Tax Kit and raised another $15 million to help fund the product’s marketing efforts.  Nguyen is now the chief architect of DocLanding, the marquis product of DOCCENTER, www.doccenterinc.com, a document and digital asset management company serving the needs of emerging and midmarket businesses.

Czech Republic: Team GINA: Zbynek Poulicek, Petra Bacikova, Boris Prochazka (Brno University of Technology). Czech Republic National Champion in 2010.  Project Overview: GINA (Geographical INformation Assistant) is an innovative mapping system for mobile devices that improves navigation in difficult terrains, team co-ordination and efficient exchange of geographic data.  Team GINA is helping rescue teams in Haiti track the progress of the cholera epidemic and monitor the current position of several Czech citizens who are ready for immediate evacuation from the island. Affected areas are indicated on a map that is updated every minute in real time and provides all the teams with the instant access to the latest information. Healthcare teams working directly in the field are able to view the map with the latest data on the mobile devices and increase their efficiency in saving human lives.  Together with the humanitarian organization HAND FOR HELP and its partners, the GINA team has also launched a news portal at http://www.cholerahaiti.com. It offers up-to-date information from affected areas to rescuers, doctors as well as journalists and anybody else interested in the issue.

New Zealand: Team OneBeep: Steve Ward, Kayo Lakadia, Chaneyol Yoo, Vinny Jeet (The University Of Auckland). Third place at the Imagine Cup 2010 Worldwide Finals.  Project Overview: To address the problem of sharing new education content when there’s spotty or non- existing bandwidth, they invented an inexpensive and robust method to distribute digital educational content via radio and video airwaves to One Laptop Per Child and Classmate PC devices.  OneBeep will begin field trials of their invention in the Solomon Islands in the New Year. www.onebeep.com

Target groups Who are the primary target groups of the initiative (e.g. pupils/students, teachers, schools, universities, policy makers, NGOs, enterprises)

Next generation of global innovators and entrepreneurs among students worldwide ages 16 and up.

Evidence of dissemination and replication of the initiative How information on the initiative is shared (website, newsletter, conferences). Online Resources

 Imagine Cup Website: http://www.imaginecup.com  Virtual Pressroom: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/imaginecup/default.aspx  Blog: http://imaginecup.com/blogs/imagine_cup_finals/default.aspx  Twitter: http://twitter.com/imaginecup  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup  YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/imaginecupmicrosoft  Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/  Other blogs: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Thinking/Real-World-Solutions-From-Worlds- Youth

Have any aspects of the initiative been replicated by another initiative/organization? Provide details.

Other technological organizations have technology based competitions. For example, Intel has their “Intel Technology Innovation Contests” which are sponsored regionally and encourage participants (teams made up of undergraduate students) to create new solutions specific to Intel technology, however, Imagine Cup is among the oldest (the first Imagine Cup competition was held in 1993) and it culminates in the World Wide finals. Evaluation Has the initiative been evaluated? Please provide conclusions of evaluation?

The Imagine Cup has not been officially evaluated as of yet, but it has been repeatedly referred to as the “Olympics of Technology” in online news sites and blogs such as the IT Times, Wired.com, Radio News Source among others.