Results of Wipro-Knowledge@Wharton Innovation Tournament, 2010
Everyone is familiar with the saying, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ But in today’s context, ‘Necessity is the mother of innovation’. That’s why companies need to innovate continuously to sustain a competitive advantage; it’s become the ‘the new normal’ now.
Enterprises have to look at new ways of doing business since the rules of the game have completely changed, even as globalization continues to blur boundaries. While innovation is constantly encouraged in classrooms and professors conduct innovation tournaments in-house or even between colleges and universities, this is the first time Wipro teamed with Wharton to conduct an innovation tournament at a global corporate level, inviting teams from all over the world to participate. The tournament is the brainchild of Wharton professors Karl Ulrich and Christian Terwiesch.
The finals of the Wipro-Knowledge@Wharton Innovation Tournament took place on March 23, 2010 on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. The finals of the tournament – dubbed as ‘brain sourcing’ by Knowledge@Wharton editor-in-chief Mukul Pandya – was keenly fought by 8 teams, whose ideas ranged from business physics to manufacture blogging and practical problems in retail.
The 8 finalists had five minutes to make their case and had to subsequently defend their tool from incisive and compelling questions from the judges, comprising people from academia and corporates. The finalists were judged on four principal parameters: novelty, feasibility, track record, and overall potential.
Here are the results of the tournament.
| PARTICIPANTS | TOOL | PRIZE MONEY | |
| WINNER | Rajesh Kumar, Sandeep Jain, and Chinmay Mesaria, HP, Bangalore | A chain stock-out tool; the tool identifies the root causes of stock-outs (when the manufacturer is out of stock) on the supplier side and also has a predictive modeling for reducing future stock-outs. | $10,000 |
| SECOND PLACE | Professor Dr. Kaustubh Dhargalkar Professor and Dr. Ramya Narayanaswamy from Mumbai | A tool that collects pain points from customers in real time. | $5,000 |
| THIRD PLACE | Darshana Dave, MET Schools of Management, Mumbai & Hirenkumar Anilbhai Umaraviya |
A pocket diary for managing efficiencies in the supply chain. | $5,000 |
