The Applied Innovation Institute is a non-profit organization that helps universities around the globe to teach innovation and entrepreneurship to the next generation of entrepreneurs.   We have a mobile technology focus and annually we hold a University Mobile Challenge in conjunction with the GSM Association at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.  The competition is focused on encouraging student entrepreneurs to build creative applications of mobile technology to solve problems and pursue new business opportunities.

Over the years, we have conducted four Mobile Challenge events and have surfaced exciting new applications and businesses that use mobile technology to solve problems such as ensuring fresh water supply to villages in India, allowing performance artist to sell tickets to their events directly to the public, and predicting pre-mature delivery of new-borns two weeks in advance of current methods.

For the University Mobile Challenge, each year we select approximately twelve teams to attend the finals in Barcelona.  Last year, we had forty eight Universities that submitted student teams to participate in the global finals in Barcelona and through a process of Web Interviews, we selected the twelve strongest teams.   In the past years, we’ve had participation from universities including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, University Michigan, UC Berkeley, Oxford, University of Cambridge, Ecole Polytechnique, IIT, Tsinghua, Senegal, Cairo, Beruit, British Columbia, and many others.   Our vision is to eventually host regional events that feed into the global student competition and this year we are doing our first regional event in the Middle East.

The benefits of this competition are varied:

• For the students who get selected, they receive an experience that teaches them what it takes to compete on a global stage.  As part of the competition, we provide them with on-site instruction and workshops to help them prepare how they present and position their technology.  Through attending the event, they learn more about what it takes to succeed and to get their innovations into the marketplace.

• For all of the students at all of the universities that get involved, it provides inspiration and motivation to the students on campus to apply their skills creatively to find new applications for mobile technology.  The local universities are only allowed to submit one team for consideration as a finalist and thus they run a local competition to determine which team will represent their university at the annual University Mobile Challenge in Barcelona.

• For the university faculty, not only do they have a tool to help motivate their students but they also have the opportunity to compare their teaching methods and thus improve.

• For the consumers of the technologies developed, they have a greater chance of seeing the benefits of the innovation through the fact that we help the technology get deployed.  For example, villages in India now have a more consistent fresh water supply as a result of the mobile control technology that was developed by one of our winning teams.

• Finally, the local communities and economies that host the universities receive a benefit from the economic development associated with the new companies that are spawned by the technology.

Some of the many problems solved by University Mobile Challenge teams have included:

• a low cost system that uses mobile devices to test and detect hearing problems in infants for those rural areas that do not have access to the full size equipment

• a system to perform up-to a two-week advance detection of a pre-mature, infant delivery that used the mobile phone as a relay

• a system to triangulate on a cell phone to locate their owners in the rubble of buildings after an earth quake

• a mobile system to allow performing artists to sell tickets directly to their fans

• a new user interface that allows Motor Neuron patients and the elderly to send SMS messages despite not having fine motor control

• a mobile logbook for Multiple Sclerosis patients to better manage their perscriptions

• a mobile system to allow sharing of parking spaces  in large urban areas

• low cost bluetooth module that plugs into a standard auto diagnostic plug to allow the driver’s cell phone to add NavStar-like functionality to any car