VIEW challenges students to think on feet in annual Elevator Pitch Competition
Associate Professor of Marketing Michael McCollough said the University of Idaho business department likes to refer to all UI students as business students.
“We kind of like to say that most of the students at the University of Idaho are in business, they just don’t know it,” McCollough said. “And what we mean by that is they may not be majoring in business, but if we ask them what they want to do when they graduate, they want a job.”
McCollough worked as director of Vandal Innovation and Enterprise Works (VIEW) for five years and helped run the group’s annual Elevator Pitch Competition, a contest he said every type of student should consider participating in.
The idea behind the competition is that normally, the most important business proposals people make aren’t in a formal presentation style, but rather the pitches they make during the span of time in an elevator, a cab or a reception.
This year’s competition will take place from 5-7 p.m. Thursday on the first floor gallery of the Albertson Building. The deadline to register as a competitor has passed.
As the former VIEW director, McCollough said he helped implement changes to the competition — changing it from a more traditional style of an elevator pitch competition to a reception style format.
He said in most elevator pitch competitions, groups get a short window of time to give their pitch in a classroom setting and only get one or two minutes of feedback from the judges.
In a reception format, the feel is less stressful and more interactive, McCollough said. Every student in each group has the chance to participate and the judges have more time to give feedback. Students can also choose which judge to approach and they have the chance to improve based on the criticism they receive throughout the night.
Current VIEW Director George Tanner said UI is one of the only universities to use a reception format for its elevator pitch competition.
“If you really got a chance to pitch an investor … it’s not going to be one minute in front of a classroom or boardroom, it’s going to be a conversation,” Tanner said. “That’s what we try to mimic, is the conversation that takes place between entrepreneurs and the people that can take that idea.”
According to McCollough, during the competition groups pitch an innovative idea to the judges, who are spread out across the room, mingling with other guests or competitors. If a judge likes a group’s pitch, they hand them a business card. If they really like a group’s pitch, the business card they hand them will have the judge’s initials on it.
At the end of the night, the group with the most business cards wins. McCollough said the prizes usually consist of checks worth up to $2,000 or sometimes $3,000. The money is meant for the students to set their pitched plan into motion.
Tanner started as the new VIEW director this semester, and said he wants to start using the elevator pitch competition as preparation for students competing in other business contests in the spring. He said last year a few students who participated in the elevator pitch competition were sent to business competitions outside of Idaho, and he wants to continue this new development.
“This year there’s a new initiative in Idaho called the ‘Idaho Entrepreneur Challenge,'” Tanner said. “We will be competing along with all the schools, all the colleges and universities in the state for $150,000 in prize money.”
Before he was director, Tanner worked for the competition as a business instructor for three years and said he always enjoyed observing students competing through the night.
“It’s fun for me, as a college professor, to watch the tension rise,” Tanner said. “To see them work on their pitches, try to come up with that great problem statement, solve the problem, create that perfect pitch and then see them go execute it.”
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected]