LATIN AMERICAN RALLY OF INNOVATION: ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL PRIZES

The second edition of the “Latin American Rally of Innovation” is approaching.  This is an International competition that has a purpose to strengthen open innovation to students who are majoring in engineering throughout Latin America; this project is developed by teams during 28 consecutive hours.

On October 9-10, 2015, was proposed a real life challenge that required a creative solution that is not limited only to the technological sector, it could be part of various sectors of activities or social topics including: environmental, organizational, artistically oriented, logistics and other sectors.

Through the support of the Secretariat of University Policies (SPU) there have been structured the following national prizes for Argentina in the 2015 edition of Latin American Rally of Innovation:

•   To 16 participants, while four participants from the four groups better ranked (two in the category of innovation and two in the category of social impact), will be reimbursed a trip to centers of innovation and entrepreneurship of Latin America (options between Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay).

•   Trips will effectively be accomplished during the first semester of 2016.

The 16 participants will attend an introductory meeting of evaluation of a Rally in the City of Buenos Aires.

The award recipients will be selected by the teams themselves (from the four teams at least two should be students of engineering).

The rally is established within the framework of Regional Program of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Engineering (PRECITYE) and takes as a reference and was inspired by the competition denominated “the 24 hours of Innovation” created in 2007 by the Institute of Engineering ESTIA (Ecole Superieure des Technologies Industrielles Avancées) of France.

Starting from the original setting, since PRECITYE designed this new format that gathers students from the Colleges of Engineering in Latin America, in a joint initiative with students of other colleges with the objective to promote a new culture of open innovation and contributes with new solution proposals to real problems of the region.

The colleges of engineering gather teams of engineering students to participate in the Rally of Innovation, where they will be presented with challenges presented by institutions and companies.

It is expected and will be promoted the gathering of engineering students and those from other disciplines, shaping multi disciplinary teams for the solution of persisting challenges.

Teams will work physically in the local headquarters in the hosting universities or in places that these institutions in possible association with other institutions, determine as physical centers.

Teams have 28 hours to select a challenge, understand the problem, establish groups, provide a solution, identify beneficiaries, validate the results, adjust all that is necessary until achieving a proposal presented in a video that has a duration of three minutes and printed report (that includes an analysis through CANVAS) that encompasses the sustainability potential and social impact of the proposal.  All the presented material by the teams will be a public domain.

Jurors of each center will analyze the proposals received and will proclaim as winners in two categories:

• Innovation: Proposals that are distinguished in innovation aspects.
• Social impact: proposals that are distinguished for their social impact.

For more information: http://www.rallydeinnovacion.org/