Toronto, March 14, 2012 – Over 130 students across the United States and Canada will join together on March 24 at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto to compete in the third annual Rotman Design Challenge. Attracting business and design students from institutions throughout Canada and the United States, the participating teams will tackle a problem on how to shape people’s financial behaviour that will lead to a more sustainable and economically viable life. Teams have six weeks to work on their concept using business and design methodologies and will be evaluated by a panel of professionals and academics with both business and design expertise. Participants include teams from the Darden School of Business, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NYU Stern School of Business, and California College of the Arts.
“This competition is trying to do something very important – to create a venue for the next generation of business leaders to practice integrating new business models with making a positive social impact“ says Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management.
To produce deeper insights and well-rounded solutions, the Rotman Design Challenge puts great emphasis on the inter-faculty collaboration. For example, at the University of Toronto, Rotman MBA students have been matched with designers from the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.
“Collaboration among design and business students pushes the boundaries of our view of what the world could be like,” say co-chairs of the 2012 Rotman Design Challenge Victor Skrylev, MBA’12 and Suying Wang, MBA’12. “By reimagining what is possible we can create unique opportunities for both business and society as a whole to drive positive change.”
To help teams further develop their ideas along the way Rotman Design Challenge is partnering with well-known innovation and design consultancies, such as IDEO, Doblin a member of Monitor Group, and Rotman DesignWorks, to provide mentorship opportunities with professional consultants.
TD Bank Group is the lead sponsor of the 2012 Rotman Design Challenge. “We’re very pleased to support this collaborative competition that we expect will generate some exciting ideas that have practical, real-world applications, said Ray Chun, Senior Vice President, Everyday Banking and Payments. “This competition will allow us to further understand [graduating] students’ financial needs, which is key to developing the right products, services and programs to offer them.”
To find out more about the Rotman Design Challenge, please visit http://www.rotmandesignchallenge.com and follow us on Twitter (@rotmandesign) and Facebook.