If you’ve got a great idea that would improve graduate business education, the Graduate Management Admission Council wants to hear it. Your three-paragraph idea could win you $50,000.

GMAC’s Management Education for Tomorrow Ideas to Innovation (I2I) Challenge will award $250,000 for the top 15 ideas to improve graduate management education, and then spend up to $10 million more to turn one or more of them into reality.

“The Ideas to Innovation Challenge is particularly timely because today’s students see business school as the place they can learn the skills to make the world a better place and empower others,” says Allen Brandt, director of the MET Fund. “In that spirit of social entrepreneurship, the challenge is open to anyone with a great idea to improve graduate management education.”

GMAC’s philanthropic MET Fund, which invests in initiatives to support graduate management education, launched the I2I Challenge in July. Open to individuals and teams of up to five people, the first phase of the challenge asks simply: What one idea would improve graduate management education?

In the second phase launching in 2011, the MET Fund will post the top ideas on its website, gmacmetfund.org, where schools and other not-for-profit organizations can submit proposals to turn any of the ideas into reality.

GMAC is the worldwide association of business schools that owns the GMAT exam, used in admissions decisions by almost 5,000 business programs worldwide. “Just as the GMAT exam helps discover talent wherever in the world it may be, the I2I Challenge seeks to identify ideas for business school innovation, wherever in the world they may be,” Brandt says. “Recognizing that those with great ideas aren’t always in the position to implement them, the MET Fund is separating the phases, rewarding great ideas and proposals to implement them separately.”

For the I2I Challenge, GMAC defines innovation as the implementation of an idea that improves management education in a meaningful way─for students, for schools, for societies.

Ideas must be no longer than one page long and should be able to demonstrate measurable results within a one- to three-year time frame. The best proposals will be those that can show the largest impact on management education in either a specific world region or globally, and that can be most easily taught to others to implement. Ideas will be judged on:

• Concept originality/overview (30%). The new idea, use or application is ingenious, innovative and inspired.
• Effect on management education (40%). The idea has a large impact on students and has a strong potential for expansion and replication.
• Feasibility (30%). The concept is feasible, addresses the obvious risks, and is able to produce measurable results within a one- to three-year time horizon.

Ideas will be accepted online through October 8, 2010. The top 15—one $50,000, four $25,000, and 10 $10,000 ideas—will be announced December 15. To find out more or register for the challenge, go to gmacmetfund.org. Follow the Fund on Twitter at @GMACMETFund.

For more information on business school and the GMAT exam, go to mba.com

 

 

 

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