RBC announces top five team finalists for Next Great Innovator
Challenge
TORONTO, February 12, 2008 — RBC today announced
the five team finalists for the 2008 RBC Next Great Innovator
Challenge™. This year's finalists are from York University's
Schulich School of Business, Ryerson's Ted Rogers School of
Management and three teams from the University of Toronto's
Rotman School of Business.
"Selecting five finalists from more than 100 incredible
submissions was a challenge," said Dr. Anita Sands, senior
vice-president, Innovation and Process Design. "This
year's entries were some of the best we've seen and these
five finalists made a strong impression on the judges as well
as the student voters. Any one of them could be Canada's Next
Great Innovator."
This year's Challenge asked university and college students
from across Canada to "describe an innovation, idea or
concept that Canadian financial institutions should consider
to make it easier for clients to do business with us."
Working in teams of three or four, students were asked to
submit a unique and innovative idea related to the Challenge.
Here are the five team finalists and their innovative ideas:
Ebiz Innovators (Rotman) - Create a parent-friendly
banking services initiative for children and pre-teens; appealing
to children and trusted by parents.
Breakthrough Concepts (Rotman) - Offer an integrated
suite of back office services for small business owners; services
they value, provided in one place from their trusted financial
services provider.
Hype Cyclists (Rotman) - Establish a "mass"
managed venture fund collecting funds and expertise from many
independent investors for the purpose of investing in small
businesses ventures.
RUMBA (Ryerson MBA) - Evolve the retail banking experience
using a personal banking workstation to combine the best of
personal banking, ATM services and online banking in an "anytime,
anywhere" fashion.
Three Bean Salad (Schulich Undergrad) - Offer a simple-to-use,
customizable, online budgeting tool for students and young
adults that automatically sorts clients' debit and
credit card purchases into various expense categories and
produces a summary of their monthly expenses.
Proposals were evaluated by the RBC Applied Innovation team
and narrowed down to the top 15 submissions. The RBC Innovation
Council reviewed these 15 submissions and selected the top
four teams as finalists. The fifth finalist was chosen after
more than 3,400 votes were submitted through a peer-voting
selection process, in which the Council invited the public
to choose the last finalist from five additional Challenge
submissions.
The national winner will be awarded $20,000, second place
will receive $10,000 and the three other finalists will receive
$5,000 respectively.
"At RBC, we strive to be innovative in everything we
do and connect what is possible to what is valuable to our
clients," said Sands. "The RBC Next Great Innovator
Challenge gives students the opportunity to significantly
impact the future of the Canadian financial services industry,
and in fact, we are currently in the process of implementing
two winning ideas from last year's Challenge."
The top five teams will be evaluated by the RBC Next Great
Innovator judging panel consisting of some of RBC's top executives.
The final evaluations and awards ceremony will take place
on February 21, 2008, when RBC's Next Great Innovator will
be announced. All finalists will be featured on The Next Great
Innovator Challenge website at: www.nextgreatinnovator.com.
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For more information and to book interviews, please contact:
Jackie Braden, RBC, Media Relations, (416) 974-2124
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