Nutrisprinky in the Final: Innovate 2018 Success

Congratulations to Riddet Students Nicole Chen, Sewuese Okubanjo, Sarah Priour and Feng-Ming Chian for making it to the final stage of Innovate 2018. See a highlight video including our students here.

Innovate 2018 is a competition where novel ideas are ignited and brought to life. 2018 saw 90 applicants with novel ideas enter the competition in July. This group was reduced down to 19 in the second stage during August/September; our Riddet team presented their novel food product to over 40 business mentors in September, with a 3-minute sales pitch, followed by over 10 minutes of questions. Mentors selected the Top 6 ideas for the final stage and our Riddet Nutrisprinky team are finalists! The finalists complete 10 weeks of mentoring to further develop their innovations, with the overall winning idea, collecting a $5000 cash prize, announced at a Grand Final on November 29th in Palmerston North.

The Riddet team presented their novel food product, Nutrisprinky. This is an all-in-one nutritious and convenient vegetable and salad sprinkle with a key ingredient being a food industry by-product. In May, the team entered eCentre and Massey University’s Go Innovate! Competition and won the People’s Choice Award. In July, Sarah presented the work to the eCentre’s innovation showcase in Auckland About 120 people attended with different businesses and mentors trying to get the right connections.

These innovative students developed their idea at a Riddet Institute Enterprise and Innovation workshop led by Dr Chris Kirk. The workshop applies innovation commercially to R&D and includes advice on how to pitch a research or business opportunity to funding committees. The hands-on experience uses ‘lean’ methodology and sees student teams work on real examples and conduct potential customer interviews.

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