Microsoft Imagine Cup Innovation Competition

Deadline: 15 March 2015
Open to: international students
Prize: 50,000 US dollars

Description

The Imagine Cup Innovation Competition is a global contest for the best new innovative software and the winning team will take home $50,000 (US). Create a desktop or tablet project using Windows, or a mobile project using Windows Phone, or a browser project using Windows Azure and you could win big at the Imagine Cup World Finals in Seattle 2015. If you’ve got a great idea, assemble a great team and work hard to bring that idea to life. Your project could be on devices all over the world, changing lives and giving people the thrill of seeing the future come to life right in front of them.

Eligibility

Every student more than 16 years of age and its team can compete in this prestige competition.

Competition

There are different types of competition in which you can choose to compete. These are the competitions:

• Games Competition: If it’s a game, it belongs on the Games Path. If you’re hoping to entertain your users, give them a fun interactive experience, or even challenge their assumptions about what a game could be, the Games Path is your home;
• Innovation: The Innovation Path is the place for the next big thing. Are you looking to change the way people use technology? Are you planning something that will disrupt the current paradigm? Do you see your app in everyone’s hands, all over the world? If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place;
• World Citizenship: Do you want to make the world a better place? The World Citizenship Path is for projects that want to address an important social problem such as disease, natural disasters, civil rights, poverty, access to vital information, gender equality, and so on. It’s about solving real problems for real people.

In each competition there are several challenges in which you can compete. Within each path, they have four contests: The Pitch Video Challenge; The Project Blueprint Challenge; The User Experience Challenge, and finally The Main Competition itself.
Please note that this is not mandatory; You don’t have to compete in all the contests for a given path -you can do one, skip one. But it is recommended that students who compete in one or more of the Challenges do better when they reach the main competition.

Award

There are different awards depending of what challenges you are going to take and compete in:

• Round one: Each step in the competitions  is a new challenge that will hone your skills and your project, and offer you a shot at a $3,000 prize;
• Round two: Every World Semifinalist team who advances to round 3 will receive a trip to the Imagine Cup 2015 Worldwide Finals in Seattle, Washington, USA, in July, 2015, to compete at the World Finals;
• Round three: Grand Prize- $50,000 USD, to be divided equally among each officially registered member of the Team;

Please note that for every type of competition there is Grand Prize of 50,000 US dollars.

Application

The application process is easy. You only need to visit the official page and register with your Microsoft office account and provide information about you and your team.

Additional information is provided on their official webpage and you can download the official rules here.