Enterprise + Social Impact: Midwest Social Innovation Start-Up Challenge

Midwest Social Innovation Start-Up Challenge is an opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to submit a business model that includes a social or environmental impact that makes the world a better place! The challenge is open to any ambitious team or individual who has an idea to create positive social change. Submit your idea here by May 20th.

And we promise not to forget about the fun! The challenge will provide excellent networking and learning opportunities as the events convene at ManpowerGroup world headquarters with business executives, funders, mentors, local entrepreneurs, and prominent national figures in social innovation.

The Midwest Social Innovation Start-Up Challenge is presented by the Marquette Social Innovation Initiative in collaboration with the Brady Corporation, The Business Journal, Cardinal Stritch University, Dell Inc., Greater Milwaukee Committee (MiKE), Johnson Controls, MIAD, MSOE, and the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and parallels the national platform founded by Dell Inc. and the University of Texas – Austin.

Timeline and details

May 20, 2013 (noon) Plan Submission Deadline: Submissions are open to any team or individual with an early-stage idea to a mature project Submit here. Entering is free and easy - and you may enter as many ideas as you like!

ROUND 1
May 24, 2013 Selection Announced: Up to 20 teams/individuals selected to present at Flying Car Innovation Week, June 6th, ManpowerGroup world headquarters, Milwaukee.

ROUND 2
June 6, 2013 Semi-finals pitches and judging: 20 teams/individuals will participate in an afternoon in Milwaukee, WI as part of Flying Car week.
Prize: 3-5 teams will be chosen to share $15,000 in cash, present their start-up idea at the evening reception, participate in summer workshops and mentoring, receive complimentary tickets to the Flying Car Gala, and advance to the Brady Midwest Regional Championship in August.

June – August: Bi-weekly mentoring and networking for the 3 -5 semi-finalists with Translator

ROUND 3
August 15, 2013: Brady Corporation Midwest Regional Championship. The 3-5 Semi-Finalists present their revised and improved business plans and a final winner is selected.
Prize: $25,000 cash

Questions? Elise.chapman@marquette.edu

About flying car

The Midwest Social Innovation Start-Up Challenge is one of many Flying Car Innovation Week events in Milwaukee, June 1 -10, 2013.

Flying Car is an annual SXSW-style destination event celebrating the year’s greatest breakthroughs in technology and innovation. Part TED-style summit, part World’s Fair exhibition, part citywide party, this ten-day extravaganza brings together incredible minds and their inventions — with special events highlighting Cream City as an emerging hub of progress.

Why Flying Car?
The notion of the “flying car” has been long been held up as the epitome of the future. When cars can fly, or so the tongue-in-cheek saying goes, mankind will finally have “arrived.” In the spirit of this future-focus, the Flying Car event presents the best in new technology that seems so much like fiction, but is actually now fact.

Presented by

In partnership with:

Cardinal Stritch Logo

Dare to innovate: the conference for social entrepreneurship

It is refreshing and inspiring to see social innovation and impact entrepreneurs taking root to make a difference in Milwaukee, the Midwest, the greater USA and across the globe. For example, a social innovation movement gaining momentum simultaneously on the Western coast of Africa in Guinea:

Snuggled in next to the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone and Senegal, Guinea is a country blessed with a wealth of natural resources, minerals and an even richer, bloodied history. After decades of colonialism, 25 years under a communist dictator and 25 more under a military dictator, Guinea is now finalizing its transition into Democracy since 2010, but ranks 178 out of 186 countries on the Global Human Development Index. Its economy is just as underdeveloped, lacking a population with basic business skills and financial knowledge of any kind for development from the inside-out. Moreover, youth, who make up more than half of Guinea's population, have an unemployment rate of 70%.

In this context, Peace Corps Community Economic Development Volunteers have set out to motivate the country’s next generation of entrepreneurs with Dare to Innovate: The Conference for Social Entrepreneurship. Planned for this August, the mission of this conference is to create a community of socially minded individuals and entrepreneurs that fosters the exchange of ideas, knowledge and resources, catalyzing and promoting the social entrepreneurship movement in Guinea. It will challenge youth to become actors in their economy while combating social issues. Through partnerships with thought-leaders in the field of social entrepreneurship, the conference will be an opportunity for Guinean youth to access top-level training and to jump-start a social entrepreneurship sector in Guinea.

Our Midwest community can offer support, mentorship, and interaction through the website, blog, and social media with words of encouragement and ideas-sharing for the Guinean entrepreneurs. Think globally with your ideas, think collaboration across countries and across oceans: the potential markets and economies for creating social impact are endless.

Follow: @daretoinnovate.