The Creative Spirit is Recession Proof

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Competitions and Fellowships

Published May 13, 2009 @ 04:57PM PT

Using a bike to drill a hole in Tanzania

I'm sitting in the Finale of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, where six finalists ranging from a company to make vehicles more fuel efficient to a tea company focused on women's health are vying for $100,000 in cash and prizes.

There's no hint here that we're living in economic turmoil. No one here got the memo that in a down economy you're supposed to stick to grad school and reset your expectation. The world may be changing, but the people in this room still see themselves as having the power to make that change be for the better.

Between the MIT $100K competition and the MIT Clean Energy Prize, more than 260 teams, totalling 900 people, participated this year - far more than any before. They submitted big ideas across industries, from Web/IT to International Development to Products and Services.

There are some incredible finalists. Levant Power, for example, uses new hydrolic technology to absorb vehicle shock in a way that improves fuel efficiency by 3-5%. But perhaps unsurprisingly, my favorite finalist is the winner of the Development track, Global Cycle Solutions.

Global Cycle Solutions develops and sells bicycle peripherals -- simple but valuable add-ons such as mobile phone chargers, water pumps, and corn shellers -- which allow rural villagers in developing countries to earn extra income while being spare of labor-intensive processes. We have developed a technology that allows for two modes of operation: bicycle mode and device mode. In bicycle mode, the bicycle functions as a standard transportation vehicle, while in device mode it serves as an agricultural tool. Our device pays for itself within one month!

MIT is a great place to have a competition like this. The spirit of sometimes geeky, always passionate excitement about innovation and tinkering and iteration and creativity permeates. Perhaps the coolest thing about being here is the maybe 400+ students who showed up to learn about and support the finalists. They may be looking with dismay at the job market, or wondering what the future will be just a few years down the line, but for tonight at least they're dreaming big.