Case Study // Weber state university inspires entrepreneurs
Weber State University inspires entrepreneurs with the help of launchpad6 to present their outdoor recreation business ideas.
Weber State University is a world class regional University located in Ogden Utah that provides a top-notch, experiential education to over 20,000 students.
Weber State’s Hall Global Entrepreneurship Center offers a wide-range of opportunities to motivate and inspire, and provides unique resources to help students or members of the global community to achieve their dream of starting a business or increase their creativity and develop an entrepreneurial mindset, which is highly sought after by today's employers.
The Weber State Outdoor Weber Competition challenge
The Weber State Hall Global Entrepreneurship Center was looking for a way to allow students across the globe present their business idea related to outdoor recreational activities. The potential outcome was to use ContestPad as a vehicle to help convert their ideas into real businesses.
Weber State decided to achieve this through a combination of global online and in person competitions. The competition needed to support online submissions, online voting and multiple judging rounds including a live presentation from finalists.
The Launchpad6 solution
Weber State started off the first year running the contest using an online voting platform augmented with a manual process. Videos were linked to the online voting to get popularity votes which were then used to create a list of finalists. These were then manually judged by a panel using good old fashioned paper and spreadsheets. This made the contest process extremely inefficient, difficult to accurately manage and increased the cost of running the contest significantly.
Challenge
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Support and promote the next generation of entrepreneurs and business ideas for outdoor recreation
Solution
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ContestPad Video contest
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Embedded entry form and voting gallery
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Online and live Judging Panel assessment
Services Offered
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Contest platform hosting and support
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ContestPad Advanced package
Results
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160+ student entries
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400,000+ page visits
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211,000+ public votes
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Support for ideas to business execution
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Research outcomes of successful pitches
Weber State needed a solution that was going to help them manage the contest from initial submission right through to final live judging. Weber State wasn’t even sure if there was a solution available that could meet these needs. That was until they came across ContestPad from Launchpad6. ContestPad had everything they needed to manage the competition from start to finish. Leveraging ContestPad, students and the global community were invited to upload their pitch of their outdoor recreation business idea.
There was no need to use external video platforms as this was all managed by ContestPad.
Entrants were then encouraged to promote their business idea to attract the most number of votes. This helped participants tune their marketing skills to promote to a broader audience.
Entries were then assessed by a judging panel consisting of members across different states of the USA. Entries were scored against specific assessment criteria over multiple rounds until a small number of finalists were selected. These were based on the highest combined score from each round.
The finalists were then invited to Ogden Utah to pitch their idea live to a panel of astute judges. The judges leveraged tablets and ContestPad’s judging portal to assess each pitch against assessment criteria to finally select the winners.
The Launchpad6 solution managed the entire contest from start to finish.
“Using Launchpad6 not only brought our competition all together but it is efficient, allowed us to get information quickly and everything ran so smoothly.” says Brandon Stoddard, Director of the Hall Global Entrepreneurship Center at Weber State University
The results
Weber State have so far received 160+ entries, over 211,000 votes and over 400,000+ page visits in a total of five weeks.
Most importantly it has helped students to turn their startup idea into reality by creating an opportunity to launch real businesses. In some cases students have even gone on to win subsequent innovation competitions based on the experience they gained from the Weber State program.
Weber State also realised an unexpected benefit by leveraging the pitch content to conduct further research. They were able to study what made each candidate successful and how this correlated to the preparation and pitch approach. These research outcomes further strengthen Weber State’s ability to deliver education based on researched evidence from the competition.
As Weber State prepare to deliver this years Outdoor Weber Competition, Launchpad6’s solution and team are ready to ensure it is another complete success.
Brandon stoddard,
Director of the Hall Global Entrepreneurship Center
“Using Launchpad6 not only brought our competition all together but it is efficient, allowed us to get information quickly and ensured everything ran so smoothly.”