Congratulations!

A team of students from the VCU Brandcenter won the international MBA Innovation Challenge. The Innovation Challenge competition is the world’s largest and most established business innovation competition. For nine years running, the brightest and most creative graduate students from universities all over the world have been matched with leading companies in an experience designed to address the most pressing business and social innovation challenges. This is the 4th time we’ve entered the Innovation Challenge competition. In 2008, we came in 2nd out of 264 teams.This year, our team bested 186 other business school teams from the most prestigious B-schools like Wharton, UVA, Harvard, Duke, UC Berkley, Indian School of Business, London School of Business, MIT, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, UNC-CH, UCLA and many others. Not only did a team from the Brandcenter win, but we had three teams in the final 15, the only school to have do so.

We are so proud of “Team Brandslam” (Jennifer Clinehens, Cody Pate, Katlyn Williams and Ryan Dowling) for winning the Innovation Challenge and earning the VCU Brandcenter the title of  ”the most innovative business school in the world.”

A very special thanks to Professor Don Just for his leadership, advising and mentoring of all of the teams including Team Brandslam’s project for AT&T. They were charged with developing a cloud-based program to help businesses cut costs for AT&T.

The team and Don are ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon and they’ll be holding the grand prize check for $20,000.

Again, we’re very proud of Don and the team AND for the opportunity to prove to the world what we’ve known all along….that the VCU Brandcenter is “the most innovative business school in the world.”