Innovation Olympics – For Students

2024 IXL Innovation Olympics Schedule

How does the program work?

Innovation Olympics is an eight-week action learning program that IXL Center and the Global Innovation Management Institute offer every quarter. It is a unique and practical program that challenges business school students to integrate their business knowledge to solve a real innovation & growth issue for a senior executive from a company. 

Four Key Elements of the Program include:

1. Best Companies, Hardest Challenges

• Defining an exciting and difficult challenge they are currently facing with stretch targets
• Demanding world-class results from teams and provide constructive feedback
• Setting guidelines for degree of stretch, current realities

2. Diverse and Well-Prepared Teams

Each company receives 3-4 well prepared teams of 4-6 participants including:

• Students and/or alumni with minimum of two years of work experience
• All participants and interns trained in disciplined innovation tools
• Participants from different job functions, multiple industries, countries and cultures

3. Proven Lean Innovation Process

In 6-8 weeks, the teams leverage a battle-tested process, software enabled tools, and robust exercises to drive the generation of:

• Hundreds of insights and idea fragments
• 15-25 well-developed concepts
• 5-10 tested and validated business cases and plans

4. Experienced Business Innovation Coaches

Experienced mentors/coaches* provide expert guidance and program management by:

• Managing and guiding the diverse teams and act as the primary interface between teams and clients
• Providing tools, training, and coaching to build more lasting innovation capability and leadership skills
• Enabling clients to focus on evaluating ideas and business concepts instead of program management

* Previous mentors include consultants, partners and senior executives.

What type of companies you will work with?

Over 250 companies across 40+ industries have identified and developed new growth opportunities by leveraging our open innovation platform.

 Some challenges we have worked on include:

1. 1. Helping the VP of New Business at Verizon identify multi-billion dollar growth opportunities at the intersection of telecommunications and other industries
   2. Working with the President of Sherwin-Williams’ $2 billion Global Finishes Group to develop new coating concepts that could be possible and profitable for emerging markets over the next five years
   3. Helping the Deputy COO of Emirates NBD, a Middle Eastern banking giant, develop futuristic and innovative solutions beyond credit cards
   4. Working with the Director of Innovation & New Business Development at Natura, a Brazilian cosmetics leader, on the future of online cosmetics
   5. Helping the innovation and new business teams at Clorox build stronger value propositions and business cases around ideas that had been submitted but not fully developed
   6. Working with a member of the Board of Directors of One Laptop per Child to identify new scale-up implementation business models to make OLPC a sustainable organization in the face of intense competition

Learn more 

What are the requirements to participate?

1. 1. Team members should have a minimum of two years of work experience
   2. Team members should be students or alumni from the same school
   3. At least three team members need to attend all client meetings, and at least two members need to attend the weekly mentor sessions
   4. Only one team member needs to register the team.
   5. Teams must have at least four members and possess functional diversity

 Have in mind: 

• • • No registration or participation fee is required
    • Participation can be in-person in Boston or virtually
    • Meetings are primarily via video conference but can also be face-to-face based on location
    • Multiple teams from the same university can apply, with no intra-university competition
    • Team selection is based on functional diversity, work experience, university, and registration time.
    • Selections are announced 2-3 weeks before the cycle, with shortlisted teams contacted by the program team

Notes on the Prize

The maximum prize available per company is $6,000. In case of a tie, the prize money will be allocated accordingly to reflect the tie. The individual recipients of the prize money will be responsible for the tax implications of their winnings.

Prize payments are treated as income by the IXL Center and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a United States government agency responsible for the collection and enforcement of taxes. Non-U.S. citizens residing outside the U.S. will have to handle the tax on their prize payments.

There are two options:

• • Option 1: The prize winnings will be sent to one appointed member of the team through a check or wire transfer. The team will need to fill out an authorization form.
  • Option 2: Each member of the winning team receives an Amazon gift card.