Keller Center, USG to host first Idea Farm host first Idea Farm

The USG and the Keller Center will host the first Princeton Idea Farm, an idea development competition sponsored by Microsoft, from Feb. 22-24.

The Idea Farm will allow students to present innovative ideas in any discipline without needing to develop these ideas completely on their own. Unlike other competitions, which require participants to produce prototypes or other concrete implementations of their ideas, Idea Farm will allow participants to submit undeveloped ideas, allowing for wider participation by the student body.

“The contest is basically to prevent students who would usually be excluded from the more technical hackathon-type of ideas and include them in the innovation-entrepreneurship process,” former USG social committee chair Benedict Wagstaff ’14 said. “It’s encouraging people to be creative, to come up with new ideas that hopefully will be something that we’ve not seen before, that comes from outside the box.”

Teams of up to five students will present their proposals to judges, outlining their ideas’ viability and general business plans. Students will also participate in a poster session to display their proposals in a form of their choice.

Awards include a grand prize of $3,000 and the chance for one’s idea to be developed into a Windows Store app by Microsoft, a second prize of $1,000 and a $250 cash award for the winners of each of the four categories: Social Entrepreneurship, Education, Finance and Entertainment. Students, including the winner whose idea will be developed into an app, will not lose their intellectual property rights to Microsoft by participating in the competition.

The idea for the competition originated from conversations among the Social Committee, members of the entrepreneurship community on campus, representatives from Microsoft and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students as they discussed ways to further entrepreneurship opportunities on campus, Wagstaff said. Microsoft has funded various Princeton events in the past, including the upcoming HackPrinceton hackathon, which will run from March 29-30, and the Silent Disco earlier this year on Jan. 15.

“[We thought about] what aspects of the current entrepreneurship environment — ecosystem — on campus were missing,” Wagstaff said. “This kind of event was something we thought could add to the current dynamic culture that’s been growing.”

On Feb. 22 and Feb. 23, Idea Farm will begin with a keynote address and presentations by guest speakers and will allow students time to prepare for the competition. The actual judging and poster sessions will take place on Feb. 24.

“This is very straightforward; it makes getting to the first step very accessible,” Wagstaff said. “You just need to have an idea, or come up with something and be able to tell people what it is, and if it’s a great idea, you’ll get something out of it.”