A Prezi Business Case Study Competition at Berkeley

This past weekend I had the honor of judging a business case study competition for undergraduates at The University of California, Berkeley. Co-sponsored by Edelman and Prezi, the assignment was for teams to present a business proposal for an untapped market/opportunity for an existing Bay Area company under five years old. 

And naturally, the teams had to present using Prezi.  

After nearly 20 initial subsmissions, 8 teams were chosen to present their proposals live this past weekend. My fellow judges were Zane Groshelle and Alex Vasin from Prezi. 

The students took the competition very seriously and many presented very detailed and well-researched proposals. The clear winners though were a team of freshman from Singapore (above) who proposed a shift of direction for an e-gifting app to make everyday gifting much more thoughtful and personal. I'm being intentionally vague here, because the proposal was so impressive that we actually recommended the team pursue the concept themselves as an entirely new venture (they had not yet been in contact with the existing company.)

But there were a lot of creative ideas and a lot of excellent uses of Prezi. The students seemed to have little problem presenting using the software, and that's indeed one of the reasons that Prezi is focusing efforts on winning over these younger generations. Give them a few years and they'll be choosing Prezi over PowerPoint in boardrooms all over...

Take a look at some pics below.