?What If! Innovate Challenge

?What If! Innovation Challenge

In the period of September 2017 through to November 2017 we were set an innovation challenge by Sam and Matt from ?What If!.  ?What If! are a company which helps big companies come up with innovative ideas for their products and they were kind enough to let us partake in this brilliant opportunity.  They set us a challenge to come up with an innovative idea that would encourage more teenagers to read a book.  At first, the challenge seemed straightforward but finding a motive to make more teenagers read later turned out to be quite a difficult task.  We had split into different groups originally to come up with different ideas but at the end when we decided on one idea, we came together and developed that.  We had many ideas but we had to sacrifice some ideas to ensure that our features would be cost efficient as well as matching our purpose which was to encourage more teenagers to read (I mean giving free socks with books isn’t really motivating more teenagers to read!).  We then developed the idea that got the most votes and created a powerpoint explaining how it works.  We had check ins where we had to go to Baker Street to the What If building and each school got assigned “mentors” who would help develop ideas and give general advice.  Our mentors were Jemma and Phil who were extremely helpful in helping us single down to one idea and they were very entertaining to work alongside.  Despite not winning the competition, we had a lot of fun in the journey and developed key skills such as teamwork, communication and creative thinking.  The innovation challenge was a great experience and the group would like give special thanks to Mr Wilson, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to make our way to the competition and present our ideas.  To conclude, the innovation challenge was a great experience and I am looking forward for future challenges which would help develop key skills.

This post was provided by Bipin Chhetri (Year 12 student), who was awarded ?What If! Innovate Challenge Best Student 2017 and is looking forward to an internship with ?What If! over the summer.