Design Challenges

A cornerstone of business innovation in every industry is entrepreneurial thinking—and that couldn’t be truer in new industries that are still taking shape. Design Challenges provide engaging opportunities for students to explore emerging concepts and formulate practical solutions to issues faced by organizations operating in these spaces. Open to students from all levels and all disciplines, Design Challenges expose tomorrow’s entrepreneurs to topics and networks that have the potential to shape future economies and careers.

Past challenge topics include:

• Cannabis
• eSports
• Climate change
  
• FinTech
• Autonomous vehicles
• Brain Machine Interface 
• Empowering Education through AI 

1. Startup and Innovation CoLab powered by Blackstone LaunchPad partners with industry experts, on-campus organizations and faculty to present a series of short, info-packed virtual learning sessions to brief participating students on the selected topic. Thought leaders include local professionals and experts actively working in the selected field across the country and around the globe. 
2. Following the briefings, Challenge Leaders pose a question or a problem to be solved during the Design Challenge.
3. Students form interdisciplinary teams and get to work on solutions. Collaborative work takes place in Slack workspaces that allow continued discussion offline over several weeks.
4. Through a collaboration with UB Libraries, teams have access to a resource guide of materials specially curated by librarians for each challenge. 
5. The CoLab powered by Blackstone LaunchPad invites a panel of industry experts to serve as mentors, providing teams with guidance and networking through check-ins and feedback points throughout the challenge.
6. Teams reconvene to pitch their innovation to a panel of judges that may include industry experts, community partners, faculty and staff, alumni and professionals from a sponsoring organization.
7. Judges select winners! Challenge champions come away with an invaluable experience, and sometimes prizes including paid internship and cash awards provided by a sponsoring organization.