RJI hosts CLIMB Seed Idea Competition

By Keith Politte on December 8, 2011 0 Comments Ideas

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On November 30, the Reynolds Journalism Institute hosted the final presentations of the first annual Seed Idea Competition, sponsored by CLIMB, (Collaboration, Leadership and Innovation in Missouri Business).

The competition drew participants from 22 departments across the University of Missouri campus, from both graduate and undergraduate students. The preliminary round of presentations was held on October 19^th in the Trulaske School of Business, where six undergraduate and two graduate teams were selected as finalists.

The finalist presentations, held in RJI’s Fred W. Smith Forum were made to a panel of judges that included UM System Vice President of Research and Economic Development Michael Nichols, Small Business and Technology Development Center Business Counselor Sam Devaram, Tim Hayden, the Director of St. Louis University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, Gene Gerke of Centennial Investors, and Clint Matthews, representing the MU Student Angel Capital Fund.

Following presentations, judges selected Haute Couture Shoes, for the top undergraduate prize, with Parallel taking second prize in the category. AdFreeq took the graduate student top honors. All eight finals teams were rewarded with funding commitments.

CLIMB, one of the recipients of the University of Missouri’s 2010 “Kauffman Commercialization Grant” from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a student led organization to provide an open source framework for entrepreneurial collaboration. The Kauffman grant also funds the creation of a “Commercialization Learning Objects Repository”, led by RJI’s Keith Politte, manager of the Technology Testing Center.

The 2011 CLIMB Seed Grant Finalists Presentations

Undergraduate category:

Parallel - Joshua Johnson (Marketing) and Zach Beattie (Management)