By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau
The Canyon Challenge isn’t having growing pains. It’s having growing gains.
The fourth year of the Grand Canyon University event, which seeks to find the most viable entrepreneurial business created by a student, prospective student or employee, brought out more entries (79, up 14 from a year ago). And when the 10 finalists were chosen last week, it showed that quantity did indeed result in quality.
“The quality is substantially higher than last year,” said Tim Kelley, assistant professor for entrepreneurship and economics in the Colangelo College of Business. “There are some proven, scalable enterprises.”
Most noticeable was that many of the entries were mission driven. “I think that’s part of what we see across this generation,” Kelley said.
The remaining 10 candidates for the $7,000 first prize are encouraged to practice their three-minute oral presentations at the GCU Shark Tank meeting at 5 p.m. Thursday in the CCOB lecture hall.
The five finalists will be chosen by March 1 and make their final presentations to judges at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, in GCU Arena.
The 10 finalists in alphabetical order:
Achievement Sutra: Provides training for exams, resumé building and job interviews.
Eddie Bear Book Collection: Explanation tool for various pediatric disorders and diseases that seeks to open the difficult conversations that are important to a child’s well-being.
Enerzen Energy: Energy drink invented by three veterans, two of them U.S. Army paratroopers.
EpiFinder: Helps neurologists by providing the latest peer-reviewed discoveries, screens for evidence-based information and a guided differential diagnosis for epilepsy syndromes.
Joblyt: Connects people who are ready to work with short-term jobs and tasks, such as tutoring.
Prayer Packages: Online business that delivers exclusively tailored, Christian-inspired gifts packaged to meet both common and unique prayer requests.
Safeguard Case: Combines a protective phone case with pepper spray for personal protection.
SMART (Strategic Memory and Alzheimer’s Rehabilitation Training): Provides a medically based cognitive intervention to aid in preventing or reducing early stage dementia.
Staff Prediction: Identifies the staffing needs of perinatal units.
Contact Rick Vacek at 602-639-8203 or [email protected].
