One of the more excellent sessions at the World Innovation Forum today was a round table discussion with five teenagers who won the Camp BizSmart innovation contest. The roundtable was hosted by Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco.
The bottom line was that these kids came up with a sugar-free drink as an alternative to soda (in order to help with Juvenile Diabetes). They had business plans, spreadsheets, and one of them was even the CTO.
There were many questions from the crowd and quite a few humorous answers (e.g. Twitter is something for old people).
But the summary at the end was the most interesting. Here’s what they said about their success:
- The Grand Prize of appearing in NYC was motivating to the team.
- They practiced their presentation and saw that many of their competitors weren’t
- Everyone on the team wore a suit and shook hands with the VCs properly
- They memorized their index cards, walking around in circles practicing while their competition stared at them
- They all said that they were proud of each other
- They were working while other teams were relaxing!
Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @stevetodd
