by Katerina Stephan
In just five years, the Hult Prize Foundation has grown from a simple idea to the largest student competition in the world. Described as a “Nobel Prize for students” by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the annual competition challenges more than 22,000 teams of students from all academic disciplines, from all corners of the globe, to solve some of the most pressing issues that face humanity today. The winning team walks away with an idea that could change the world and one million dollars to make it a reality.
Back in 2009, the Hult Prize Foundation Founder and CEO Ahmad Ashkar was listening to the director of One Laptop Per Child, surrounded by his Hult Business School peers, when he was struck with an idea – what if there was a way to use crowdsourcing to combat the global challenges they were studying. Like all entrepreneurial ideas, the path to actualizing it was by no means smooth, but like all stories of entrepreneurial success, Ahmad’s determination outlasted all of the bumps, challenges and setbacks. With tenacity paralleled to few, Ahmad managed to secure two key partnerships that eventually shaped the Hult Prize’s reach and impact. One was with the Hult family for the $1 million prize, and the second was with Bill Clinton.
Each year, a small group of experts work alongside former President Bill Clinton to identify a challenge and write an accompanying case study. In the past, teams have confronted issues such as the global food crisis, chronic disease management, and early childhood education. This year’s challenge addresses crowded urban spaces, focusing specifically on how to better connect people, goods, services and capital to improve the income of the city’s dwellers. It’s then up to students to do the rest.
There are three levels of competition. At the local level, small teams of students organize, promote, and ultimately host the first competition within their own campuses. These Hult Prize @ events require only that a minimum of 10 teams compete and that there are three unbiased judges; the rest of the specifics are left to the students’ creativity and drive. For interested students who don’t have a competition on their campus, there is an additional online application. Each Hult Prize @ event can send their winning team to this next level of competition, bypassing the otherwise incredibly competitive online pool. Regionals are held in five exciting cities: Boston, San Francisco, Shanghai, Dubai and London.
One team from each regional event and one wild card team then converge in Boston for an intense incubating session where they receive expert advice and endless support to solidify their idea into a practical and possible business reality. The final competition takes place at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in New York where the one million dollars is awarded!
The competition is exhilarating and inspirational throughout but the true value of the Hult Prize extends far beyond New York, and far exceeds the monetary prize. Through the @ campus promotional work and all along the competition process, the Hult Prize is starting conversations about social entrepreneurship, a category of business that is still relatively new to the world. It’s also giving some of the brightest minds an avenue to confront issues they otherwise wouldn’t consider within their reach. There is the need, there is the talent, and there is the technology already out there; the Hult Prize just serves as a platform with a golden incentive.
