Innovation Challenge

Okay, I'm insanely remiss in this poor blog - I'm beyond even trying to make an excuse - but I thought this warranted an update for all 3 readers.

Myself and several of my cohort-mates particpated in the Innovation Challenge recently. Another team from our cohort also formed, making 2 of the 3 teams from ASU being online teams.

Coincidentally, both teams got assigned the Amex OPEN option.

Long story short, we placed #14 of those that chose the Amex OPEN option. Though I really, really wanted a Top 10 placement, this isn't too bad. We beat out a few teams from some very notable schools - MIT, Duke, SMU-Cox, Vanderbilt, Rice, UT-McCombs, UVA (with as many teams as they fielded, as the host school - that one's not very statistically significant) and the like - so I'll take it.

2006 Innovation Challenge Amex OPEN Results

And just to harp on my previous post - a healthy number of top-50 finishing teams (in all "options") were based in India, with a majority from ISB. I really think this speaks to not just the "technology" (engineering et al) education gap, US v. India, but the overall education gap. The quality of the Indian education is clearly not to be taken for granted, yet the quantity of output is still staggering. This will have interesting and far-reaching ramifications, to say the least - but it's far too past my bedtime to continue pondering on them. Perhaps later. ;-)