Georgia Southern Students Compete in the 24 Hour Creativity Slam
On April 12th and 13th April three students (Lauren Hawkins; Adam Lausch; and, Afton Updike) from Georgia Southern University competed in the first annual “Creativity and Entrepreneurship Slam” hosted by Savannah State University. The slam included students from Savannah State University, Georgia Southern University and SCAD. Students were put into multi-disciplined teams from different universities and asked to develop creative problems to a challenge. The challenge was set by Ms. Kristina Kanspedos from Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Student teams were asked to identify ways in which the company could either develop more sustainable practices and/or communicate to customers that Enterprise Rent-a-Car has the most fuel efficient fleet amongst hire care companies. Lauren Hawkins commenting on the challenge said, “We arrived with no knowledge of who we were going to work with, who was going to set the challenge
or what the challenge would be. It was bit intimidating to start with but all the teams came up with some really good ideas”.
In addition to the challenge Savannah State University’s Center for the Advancement of Creativity and Entrepreneurship organized two speakers to talk about creativity and its influence on entrepreneurship. The first speaker Dr. Sam Hunter, an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Penn State University talked about the challenge of fostering innovation in organizations. He introduced some practical ideas about how to improve personal and organizational creativity and presented some insightful research results. The second speaker Dr. John Osiri, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Washington State University discussed the role of creativity in the start-up process. He set a memorable challenge for the audience and invited them to engage in an exercise that involved making and selling a wallet. Adam Lausch talking about the exercise said, “That one was a bit of a surprise and I thought it might be a trick exercise but it really got you thinking about how to make something somebody actually wants to buy”.
Following the guest speeches the students spent the remainder of Thursday and Friday morning working on their creative solutions to the challenge. All sorts of innovative ideas were pitched including an online ticker highlighting the number of hybrid cars rented; a new division of Enterprise offering electric-bikes and Segways; and, a green guerrilla marketing campaign. In 1st place came Afton Updike’s team and 2nd place was awarded to Adam Lausch’s team. Afton said on winning the prize, “As a nursing major I didn’t expect to be on the winning team. This was a different challenge and working with students from different universities was daunting at first but in the end quite fun”. Prizes were awarded by Georgia Power and the other sponsors included the Creative Coast, Shanes Rib Shack, Baldinos Subs and Marcos Pizza.
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