Challenge Overview
As parts of West Africa are being ravaged by the Ebola epidemic, stakeholders around the world are attempting to coordinate to identify the most effective ways to address the spread of disease.  One response, from USAID and partners, is to launch Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development in an effort to elicit innovative ideas focused on the role of healthcare workers.  To start, partner OpenIDEO has launched the first part of this initiative with a wide call for ideas.

The Duke Ebola Innovation Challenge offers a unique opportunity for Duke graduate and undergraduate students from diverse schools and disciplines to work together in teams of four to five to generate innovative ideas for the OpenIDEO Fighting Ebola Challenge.  

Sponsored by the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), and the Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative (I&E).

How do I participate?
Register online by midnight October 23 to participate in an Innovation Challenge team.  You may register as an individual, as a partial team, or as a complete team.  If registering as an individual or partial team, we will match you with other students to create interdisciplinary teams.  If registering as a complete team, we encourage you to be sure that your team is interdisciplinary.  You will choose to work on one of two focus areas for the Challenge: 

1. Strengthening Health Worker Capacities: How might we enhance the protective equipment, care setting and tools in the field to empower and protect healthcare workers?
2. Boosting Tracking & Communication Abilities: How might we develop, test and rapidly deploy mobile solutions to facilitate data collection and analysis?

What is required?
As a participant, you are strongly encouraged to attend the Innovation Challenge Kickoff event the evening of Monday, October 27th (approximately one hour), and you are encouraged to send at least one of your team members to the optional workshop on Wednesday, October 29.  It is up to you and your team how much or how little time you will dedicate to the challenge and you will be required to submit a brief slide deck.  If your team is a finalist, at least a few members must attend the Finalist Presentations & Feedback session (two hours) on the evening of Wednesday, November 5th.

Schedule
Deadline to Register: October 23 at midnight
Kickoff Event & Teams Announced: October 27, 6:00pm; Fuqua School of Business McClendon Auditorium 
Workshop (optional): October 29, 6:00pm; Sanford School of Public Policy Rubenstein Hall 
Submissions Due: November 2 at midnight 
Finalist Presentations & Feedback Session: November 5, 6:00pm; Fuqua School of Business McClendon Auditorium
Deadline for OpenIDEO Challenge Idea Submission: November 7

Questions?  Email or

The final deadline for the Duke Start-Up Challenge is this October 30, 2014 at 11:59pm
 
Over $100,000 in prizes for all Duke students.
 
Student Competition Prizes
$50,000 Grand Prize (open to all Duke students)
$20,000 Best Undergraduate-led team
$5,000 AARP Foundation Prize for best project helping low income seniors
 
We also offer $10,000 in prizes in the separate Open Competition for alumni, faculty, staff, and student teams with non-student ideas.
 
In February, the top 60 student teams will be invited to create a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
During the summer, we offer $5,000 summer stipends for the top 7 teams (eligibility: Duke students must be working full-time on the startup over the summer with an intention to continue after the summer).
 
Next steps!
·  Submit your Idea Summary (see samples) on our competition page
·  Learn more about the Duke Start-Up Challenge
·  See some of the videos from last year's competitors (and two years ago)
·  Watch the Grand Finale Event with Max Hodak '12 from September 2014
·  Read interviews with this past year's Finalists
·  Twitter: @dukestart
·  Follow us on Facebook

Want to change the world?  Interested in learning more about social entrepreneurship? Do you have an innovative solution that you wish to develop, or are you interested in working with others who do? Join us for an interactive workshop exploring the meaning of social entrepreneurship.  

Learn the basics of designing your own social venture focused on social or environmental issues you care about, and discover programs and resources at Duke and that can help! Last year, students learned about designing business models for social entrepreneurship, examined case studies from successful entrepreneurs, and heard from students involved in their own projects at Duke.

The workshop is open to all Duke students.  Continental breakfast, sandwich lunch, and refreshments provided.  Space is limited to 50 participants so be sure to sign up soon!

Tuesday, September 16th, 2014
5:45p.m., Fuqua School of Business, Lilly Classroom
Light reception to follow
RSVP at https://duke.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eLmdqBrevDcRp3v

An estimated 15% of drugs sold in the world are fake—in Africa and Asia this figure can range from 10% to 30%, compromising 10% of the global medicine market. In addition to therapeutic failure and drug resistance resulting from counterfeit medications, anywhere from 30 to 2,500 patients have died from individually recorded instances of counterfeit drug sales every year. Further counterfeit drugs decrease incentives for pharmaceutical companies to enter markets, potentially limiting access to needed drugs.
Sproxil is a U.S.-based company that provides world-class brand protection in emerging markets through software and services that work anywhere there are mobile phones.  Sproxil allows consumers to verify product genuineness within seconds through SMS texts.  This technology allows patients to ensure at the moment of purchase that their drugs are from reputable providers; limiting the chance of negative health impact of counterfeit drugs and products.  To date, Sproxil has verified over 6 million products, giving everyone along the supply chain the power to quickly and confidently verify the authenticity of a drug at each step, ensuring patient safety.  For more information about Sproxil, visit http://sproxil.com/
Speaker Alden Zecha serves as CFO and Strategist of Sproxil, where he is responsible for the overall strategy, finance and administration of the company, Zecha brings to the role more than 25 years of broad-range executive expertise in operations, strategy and finance, and vast experience from work in more than 20 countries. Prior to joining Sproxil, Zecha co-founded and served as CFO of ultra-luxury travel company PrivatSea and as CFO of Rethos, a sustainability and corporate social responsibility social media website. Zecha received his MSE and BSE with honors in chemical engineering from Princeton University, where he was a United Technologies Scholar, and holds a certificate in finance from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Interested in learning about social entrepreneurship? Have an innovative solution you wish do develop or want to network with others?

Join us for an interactive workshop exploring the meaning of social entrepreneurship.  Learn the basics of designing your own social venture focused on social or environmental issues you care about, and discover programs and resources at Duke that can help!

Open to all Duke students. Lunch, snacks, and refreshments provided.

The 2nd Annual SEAD Summit brings together leading healthcare innovators from around the world for an intensive three day accelerator focused on scaling proven healthcare solutions.  This year's Summit will take place at Duke University from April 2-4, 2014 in Durham, North Carolina.  All SEAD innovators are invited to send one participant to attend the full training which provides an opportunity to meet CEO's of leading healthcare innovations, work with leading professors from Duke's Fuqua School of Business and Duke Medicine, network with undergraduate and graduate students, participate in roundtables with USAID and other healthcare funders and showcase their innovations to the broader Raleigh-Durham community.  While the accelerator portion of the SEAD Summit is closed to SEAD innovators, the general public is invited to attend the SEAD Symposium taking place on Friday, April 4th with registration found here.

For more information, please visit our main SEAD Summit and Symposium site.

How will you shape the future?

Find out at the 2014 Duke Sustainable Business and Social Impact Conference on Wednesday, February 12, 2014! Over 115 students and professionals in the Triangle-area have already signed up for the conference. Each year, we welcome close to 400 attendees and speakers at the conference making SBSI the largest student led event at Fuqua and of its kind in the Southeast region. This year, the conference focuses on “Shaping the Future Through Innovation,” featuring:

·         Keynote address by Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea
·         Closing conversation with Benefit Corporation Executives led by Bart Houlahan, Co-Founder of B Lab
·         Nine sessions addressing innovations relevant but not limited to Sustainability, Education, Healthcare, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Social Enterprise. 

You will be entered into a raffle drawing for a FREE copy of Seth’s highly entertaining business book Mission in a Bottle for registering by January 31! Hurry and register here!


Website 
Visit our website for the latest conference information.

Session Topics

·         Reimagining Waste: From Linear to Circular Supply Chains
·         Draining Assets: The Growing Importance of Water Stewardship
·         Innovations in Education Technology
·         Maximizing Impact on Education Spending
·         Global Healthcare: Reaching the Base of the Pyramid
·         Food Innovation: Transforming the System from Inside Out
·         Social Entrepreneurship: Starting, Funding, and Sustaining Social Business
·         Aligning Corporate Social Responsibility with Business Strategy
·         Hot Trends in Corporate Social Responsibility

Thank You to Our Generous Sponsors and Partners!

Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), Center for Energy Development and the Global Environment (EDGE), Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), Graduate and Professional Student Council of Duke (GPSC), Fuqua MBA Association (MBAA), John Deere, General Management Club (GMC).

Questions? Contact the SBSI Conference Co-Chairs  or .

Ron Garan
Colonel, United States Air Force (retired)
Former NASA Astronaut

Ron Garan, a highly decorated Fighter Pilot and Test Pilot, describes himself as an Explorer, Entrepreneur and Humanitarian who believes that appropriately designed and targeted social enterprise can solve many of the problems facing our world. To date, as a NASA astronaut he traveled 71,075,867 miles during 178 days in space and 27 hours and 3 minutes of EVA during four spacewalks. Ron is also an aquanaut and participated in the joint NASA-NOAA, NEEMO-9 mission, an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research laboratory.

Working in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Ron is leading an effort called Unity Node to develop a universal, open source, collaborative platform to enable humanitarian organizations around the world to work together toward their common goals and is also leading an effort to establish the Applied Research Projects Agency for Development (ARPA-D) program for USAID.

Outside his work with the US government, Ron is also a serial entrepreneur and has founded multiple business enterprises and social-impact focused startups including Manna Energy Ltd. Manna also developed a four million person program operating in Kenya, completely funded by carbon credits and is currently working on a three million person program in Rwanda.

Please join the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) and the Duke Global Health Institute in welcoming Dr. Eric Bing to Duke.

Dr. Eric G. Bing spearheads the Bush Institute’s global health initiatives, with an emphasis on creating programs that engage both the public and private sectors. He is also a professor of global health at Southern Methodist University. Dr. Bing received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, a master of public health and his Ph.D. in epidemiology from UCLA, and an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

“Every year, more than a quarter of a million women die during childbirth and almost 7 million children under five die as well.  Why?  Because, even though we have the medical solutions that people around the world need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem, but because we can’t solve a distribution problem. Saving these lives does not need to be costly, and it can be done now.” –Dr. Eric Bing