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Penn State Student Trades Pen for Ford 250 Truck in 8-wk Trader Challenge

redtruck

Update 3/20 11:20am: We have a picture of Joe and his new red truck! Way to make your daddy proud.

 

The culmination of the much-anticipated Trader Challenge yielded an undisputed win by Joe Marcus whose most recent trade was a Ford 250 Truck for a Bowflex PR3000 Home Gym.

trader
According to reports in the campus paper, Penn State’s Daily Collegian, “His goal was to get a more reliable four-wheel drive car for his father to drive in the winter.” He traded the Bowflex Gym to an out-of-shape elderly man to achieve his goal, the paper reports. Read the entire article: Ultimate Trader Challenge at Penn State reveals award winners. We hope to have a picture to post soon.

Congrats to Penn State Student Ambassador John Oliver and his team for a successful Trader Challenge! Later this week, in Washington D.C., twenty student ambassadors (9 new trainees and 11 current), along with close to 300 OPEN Conference attendees will have the chance to hear directly from Oliver about the affects of this challenge on the Penn State Innovation and Entrepreneurship ecosystem in a panel moderated by Epicenter’s own Tom Byers of Stanford University.

~ Humera Fasihuddin, Manager of Student Programming, T: @ihumera

Art Center College of Design • $50 Challenge

 

 

The $50 Challenge at the Art Center College of Design was an event created to bring designers together to be entrepreneurs by combining their skills and creativity to build a small business in 24 hours. The challenge began with an inspirational talk about the spirit of entrepreneurship by Errol Gerson and an introduction to creative strategies by Fridolin Beisert . The joint forces of these two motivational instructors paved the way for teams of students to go out and experience fast and spontaneous entrepreneurship.

Teams were given $50 and asked to go out and make as much money as they could in 24 hours. The rules were simple: make as much as you can, return the $50 investment and keep the profit or cover the losses. 24 hours later teams reunited for story telling, pizza and prizes.

Well, but what did the teams do? There was a lucrative bookbinding course, making sandwiches, distributing sodas, making a music video, creating “provocative” water, drawing portraits, selling smiles and even selling wishes. This last group called “Popwish” sold wishes and popsicles for a dollar. This idea turned out to be a great success and they are now in the process of continuing the project beyond the challenge.

The Art Center College of Design is a school full of genuine curiosity, sparking creativity and directed passion, which makes it an incubator for potential young entrepreneurial spirits. The $50 Challenge was an event created to highlight these qualities and inspire the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

This event was organized by Impact • Design for Social Change and sponsored by NCIIA (National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance)

 

 

 

— Mariana Prieto •  NCIIA Student Ambassador for Art Center College of Design