The Innovation Challenge at Thunderbird University in Phoenix where I judged this past weekend truly was amazing. Anil Rathi and Robert Lipton of Idea Crossing are brilliant for putting this together. By comparison, a business plan competition is so much easier: Think up a pretend company and but together it with pretend numbers. Here, MBA student teams from all over the world have to face real challenge questions from the challenge’s sponsors like Hilton Hotel and Valvoline with the executive responsible for these line of products sitting in the room.

Instituto de Empresa (IE) from Madrid, Spain won the title this year (BYU did last year). These guys really were quite amazing and taught us Americans alot about innovation in my opinion.