ECO Innovations for the Blue Ocean 5-minute Pitch Challenge August 30, 2012: Kolkata Blue Ocean

n is a term used to refer to clean, pristine market spaces. These are areas in an industry where customers exist but there are extremely limited or no competitors. Blue Oceans emerge because of new needs, new consumer groups, changed habits, new p product development, etc. GBS Yi-Net had organized a competition, where in the participants had to come up with innovative ideas for ventures, products or services to enable social, economical or environmental change while staying within Prof Prahalad's Innovation Sandbox. The India@75 vision is built on the cornerstones of India being the crucible of ovation innovation for the world. However, Prof C K Prahalad believed that innovation which can create sustainable business models and ensure development must follow c certain non-negotiable principles, -negotiable which he presented in the form of a Sandbox of constraints. He believed that Innovators must not have aspirations that violate any of the following principles Environmentally Sustainable, New Price Performance Levels, Fair and Transparent Transaction and Relationships, Social Equity Focus, Rule of ir Law and Individual Rights, Global Scale. The participants were judged on 5 parameters Clarity and Depth of Idea, Ability to Follow the Non negotiable Constraints, Charisma & Persuasive Impact, Non-negotiable P Contribution to Effective Managerial Thinking, Answering Questions Credibly by Prof. Debaprasad Chattopadhyay, Dr. Prithviraj S. Banerjee, and Prof. Debraj Dutta. The competition saw fourteen participants eight from first year and six from second year sharing their innovative ideas which ranged from Hybrid Power Sources to Bio gas Powered Cars, from Green Restaurants to Green Bio-gas Garments, from Eco-friendly Taxi Service to Portable Toilets to ensure sanitation in Rural India. All the friendly participants were very impressive, especially the first year students, who had just started their academic ticipants session about a month ago. Poulami Roy of second year was the winner of the competition with her idea of Portable Toilets to ensure sanitation in Rural India. Another second year student, Saborna Banerjee, was the first runner-up with her idea of a Green Restaurant. Paulomi Dasgupta, a first year student, was up the second runner-up with her idea of Green Garments. It was a great learning experience for all up participants and attendees of the event.