Prize Pool of $25,000!
Overview
Today, there are roughly 32.5 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMB’s) in the United States with 99% of those having less than 500 employees. It’s safe to say, small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of the American economy.
Join us at The Principal Innovation Challenge Hackathon - where our goal is to help connect SMB’s with each other, but also with Principal, through virtual communities! Business owners often desire business communities where they can gain insights, mentorship and education as they grow their business. How can we empower and create virtual communities so that business owners can engage and interact with each other to help navigate the day-to-day business owner responsibilities?
Business owners often have topics and needs that they either need some help navigating via a mentor, or they could share their knowledge and experiences with other businesses as well. How can we empower and create virtual communities so that Small to Medium Sized businesses interact and engage with each other?
Join us at The Principal Innovation Challenge Hackathon - where our goal is to help connect SMB’s with each other, but also with Principal, through virtual communities.
Challenge #1: Building a Community
In today’s digital world, virtual communities present the greatest opportunity for networking and collaboration. SMB’s including a consulting or engineering firm or even your favorite local spa can benefit from being in these communities. Communities can provide peer-to-peer connectivity to discuss to growth opportunities, challenges and discover innovative ideas to implement in their own business. In this challenge, we’re looking for a solution that creates a virtual community for networking and collaboration with other SMB owners across a wide variety of topics and interests.
Challenge #2: Community Engagement & Gamification
Although virtual communities can be interactive and collaborative, the challenge is to add a fun way for business owners to use toward growing their business, recruiting and retaining their employees and rewarding themselves. For this challenge, your solution should allow SMB owners to interact and engage with each other, but also include a level of gamification into their networking. For example, your community can include a referral system where if one SMB owner finds a new business to join the community, they earn a certain number of points. Be creative with how members of the community can earn points and still benefit directly from each other!
Challenge #3: Community Mentoring
When a small and medium sized business needs consultation or guidance on growing their business or solving a problem, the challenge is to create a destination that gives SMBs access to Principal experts. For example, a company with under 60 employees may not know what benefits to offer to their employees, since employee needs are different. Examples of this can be a virtual booth, where a business owner comes in and pitches their problem to Principal, or a virtual assistant that can point that business in the right direction. Your solution should revolve around connecting SMB’s to Principal so that they can get answers to their pressing questions as soon as possible.
Challenge #4: Wildcard
If you have a potential solution in mind that revolves around virtual communities, but doesn’t fit in to the first three challenges, then the Wildcard track is just for you! If you choose to submit in this track, your solution still needs to focus around helping SMB’s, whether it’s connecting them with each other or with Principal. As a best practice, you should first pitch your idea to a mentor to receive some feedback, and then continue developing your solution.