Baiada Institute Innovation Tournament

The Baiada Institute Innovation Tournament is an all-day hackathon-style tournament featuring idea pitching, team building, business model development, MVP development and networking. Students will have the opportunity to flex their creative problem-solving abilities, apply practical entrepreneurship skills and engage in hands-on experiences in developing and pitching ideas.

Note: The Spring 2025 application deadline has passed.

How It Works

Four separate $5,000 prizes will be awarded to student teams (bachelor’s and master’s degrees only) competing in this hackathon-style tournament and will be eligible for a year of incubation services at the Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship. There will also be audience prizes, in-kind service awards and other exciting giveaways.

There will also be a special $1,000 individual prize from the Paul Scheffler Endowed Award. For this award, first preference will be given to Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society members. If no eligible students meet this criteria, the prize shall be presented to an otherwise qualified candidate from the competition.

Teams with at least three individuals are required to compete in the tournament. You can still apply to the tournament if you have only one or two members: during stage one of the tournament, you will have the opportunity to add a new team member or members to your team, or even merge with another team.

There are two tournament “tracks”:

• Original idea track: Students with new ideas compete in a track where they develop and pitch their own concepts.
  • Students can compete with a business idea that they already have in mind, but it must be very early-stage with minimal development to date. The focus of the tournament is on very new ideas.
  • You cannot have previously won a prize from major Drexel competitions (e.g., Drexel Startups Fund, Incubator Competition, etc.); recent Fast Pitch Competition winners are eligible.
• Theme-based track: Don’t have an idea? This track allows students to compete without an existing idea.
  • One week before the tournament, students will be given a theme for which to generate and develop an idea.