Hiram students were recently challenged during the annual ideabuild! competition, hosted by the Burton D. Morgan Center for Integrated Entrepreneurship at Hiram College. The College provides two distinct opportunities for students to competitively pitch their best ideas to a panel of outside judges, consisting of entrepreneurs and business owners. In the fall, the College hosts ideablitz!, an idea generation and development event for students to develop an enterprise idea through the creation of a written concept statement. During the spring semester, students revisit their best ideas and examine the practicality of their concepts through the ideabuild! competition.
“The quality of the presentations was exceptionally strong and this was one of the strongest years I have seen in terms of pitching in front of the judges. Students were well prepared and not nervous at all,” said Dr. Dave Strukel director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Integrated Entrepreneurship and professor in the Scarborough School of Business and Communication.
This year, seven concepts were pitched by Hiram students, and each student or group had five minutes to present, followed by two minutes of Q&A. Ideas were judged based on the concept of a product or service, value proposition, industry and market, costs and revenues, and quality of presentation.
As in previous years, the event was made possible through a grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation.
Winners of ideabuild! 2023 include:
First Place: Project D by Jairus Green, Dominic Harris, and Anthony Harris
Project D is a specifically designed gun trigger lock that reads your fingerprint to unlock the gun and shoot.
Second Place: Golf Ball Tracker by Ryan Haffey, Dennis Pranjic, Grayson Smith
Golf Ball Tracker are golf balls that can connect to smartphones to determine their exact location via Bluetooth technology.
Third Place: Bluetooth Sleeping Mask by Andre Barnes, Derek Berger, Juan Estrada
The Bluetooth Sleeping Mask enables a more comfortable sleep due to its softness and lightness, in comparison to other sleep headsets.
By Elyse Pitkin
