MIT hosts first ever Elevator Pitch Contest

MIT hosts first ever Elevator Pitch Contest

October 31, 2007

An elevator pitch, so called because it can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride, is a brief overview of an idea for a product, service or project. More than 170 contestants from 12 different schools were given 60 seconds to pitch their idea, and winners were chosen representing different fields of innovation, including health care and life sciences, Internet and communications, products and services, energy/green technologies and development.

The winners included several members of the MIT and MIT Sloan community, with MIT sophomore Jessica Laviolette collecting the grand prize of $2,500 with a pitch on automotive production. “Painting an automobile is the most expensive and time-consuming portion of the car manufacturing process. Our patent-pending method takes one-tenth the time and one-twentieth the cost of current paint-drying technology used today,” she said.