Marketing Technology Blog

It’s not that we’re actually happy about losing the Cisco I-Prize. It was a fantastic contest and we’re proud to have made the finals in a contest that spanned the globe!

Cisco provided a ton of guidance and feedback on our idea and even spent time with us after they confirmed that we weren’t going to win. The consensus of the team was that the idea we came up with was an outstanding business idea, but it was outside the comfort zone of Cisco’s core business. It was an honest confirmation of our concerns going into the contest – but the case was still compelling enough to make the finals. We’re absolutely proud of that!

With every door that closes, another one opens – and we’re quite happy about where we’re heading now that we get to utilize the experience and take our idea to market ourselves!

The Official Cisco Press Release:

Cisco today announced the winner of the Cisco® I-Prize innovation contest, a global competition to help identify a major new business opportunity for Cisco. The winning team, based in Germany and Russia, presented Cisco with a business plan that improves energy efficiency by taking advantage of Cisco’s leadership in Internet Protocol (IP) technology. Based in two countries, the team relied on Cisco’s collaboration portfolio of Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications and the new Cisco WebEx® Connect application platform, to brainstorm their initial idea, collaborate on the business plan, and virtually present their idea to Cisco.

The Cisco I-Prize contest was launched during the opening of Cisco’s Globalization Center in Bangalore, India, in October 2007. The contest invited entrepreneurs from all over the world to join a collaborative online forum where they could brainstorm and comment on innovative business and technology ideas, form teams, and draft business plans for a chance to join Cisco and help develop their new business idea. Within the first three months of its introduction, the contest attracted more than 2,500 entrepreneurs from 104 countries.

The winning team was led by Anna Gossen, a computer science student at the Karlsruhe University in Germany. With the help of Niels Gossen, a computer science student at the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and Sergey Bessonnitsyn, a systems engineer from Russia, the team is eligible to receive US$250,000 in cash to be equally shared among the team members. The team may also be considered for opportunities to join Cisco.

“The Cisco I-Prize contest gave us a platform to build out our idea, develop an executable business and technology plan, and receive valuable feedback from respected innovators and industry leaders. The experience has been invaluable,” said Anna Gossen. “We’re excited to continue working with Cisco to evolve our idea into a real business opportunity for the company and help develop a new wave of technology leadership in improving energy efficiencies.”

The winning team proposed an approach to using the network as the platform for visibility, manageability and, ultimately, optimized control of energy-consuming systems. The winning business plan was notable for its combination of technology and business model innovation.

“One of the missions of the Cisco I-Prize was to harness innovation and talent on a global scale by using collaborative tools to help brainstorm new ideas and move them from initial concept to a viable business opportunity,” said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group. “Collaboration is transforming the way we innovate. The Cisco I-Prize is a real-world example of how new technologies are breaking down the traditional barriers of innovation and creating a world forum for exchanging new ideas.”

Entries were evaluated in much the same way that Cisco assesses internal business ideas for its Emerging Technologies Group, which is home to ventures such as Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Digital Signage and Cisco Physical Security. Judges considered both the technological innovation as well as the business opportunity, hoping to identify an idea that has the potential to achieve at least US$1 billion revenue to Cisco over a five- to seven-year period.

For those of you cheering us on in the Cisco I-Prize Contest:

Cisco I-Prize Finalists, We appreciate your patience and understand that you are anxiously awaiting the results. We need to ask you to bear with us and wait a few weeks longer.

Cisco has been awesome to work with through this entire process. It’s been a great experience for us and we’re looking forward to the outcome!

We’ll be here, Cisco!

My team of good friends, Jason, Bill, Carla and I drove to Cincinnati yesterday for our final I-Prize presentation with Cisco. The Carmel facility is a lot closer but Cisco needed to move us to enable their full Innovation team to be present.

The Finals!

With over 1100 international entries to the contest, we were selected and made the 32 semi-finalists. Now we were one of the final 12 ideas presenting in front of the very board who initiated the contest. No pressure, huh?

I couldn’t think of a better mix of team mates to work with on this project. The irony, of course, is when you pick a team of hard workers… all of us have challenging jobs already. The I-Prize really added to our workload and I’m thankful I had friends who would step up when I couldn’t. You could see the strain leave our bodies and the smiles return after we finished the presentation.

The Telepresence Experience

A sample video of Telepresence is on YouTube but it really doesn’t provide the full experience.

The room is a partial oval table that directly faces 3 enormous screens with built-in video cameras. When you plugin your laptop to do your presentation, it’s projected locally under the screens as well as remotely under the screen so all members can see it.

We had parties at 3 physical telepresence locations at our meeting as well as another caller who simply dialed in. The system automatically flips the image based on which location is speaking. But it doesn’t flip all of the screens – it simply flips to the screen that someone is speaking on. Here’s a great pic where a tech was working to the left of the San Jose group – you can see half of her.

Within a few minutes of using the system, you truly forget that you’re actually at opposite ends of the country. it’s an amazingly comfortable experience. We were definitely impressed.

The Cisco Team

With hearts pounding and so many executives from Cisco, I tried to write down everyone’s names but simply lost track. It was a thrill to be face-to-face with Marthin De Beer, though! The Cisco team were casual, gracious, inviting and supportive hosts. Any fears of Randy, Paula and Simon quickly evaporated with the leadership team we had in front of us!

Enough! How did the Presentation go?

Trying to sell a billion dollar idea in 60 minutes is definitely a new experience. Bill was our spokesperson and the guy who kept the tempo of the meeting. I chimed in with as much industry data and experience I could. We knew the toughest hurdle was actually getting the team to recognize the solution and opportunity. Carla illustrated our slide deck to visually capture the mounds of data that we packed into each slide.

POS? Really?

When you say “Point of Sales” system, folks immediately think about a barcode scanner, an inventory database, and the ability to print a receipt and charge a credit card. That’s the paradigm that we had to shift in the first 30 minutes!

We had to get the team to recognize that the POS has much more potential to be the entire hub of the business with an opportunity to integrate into all other business processes – inventory control, food supply, employment, accounting, marketing, rewards, online ordering, kiosk ordering, wireless ordering, reporting, enterprise management, etc.

The reason why people see a POS as a ‘glorified cash register’ is that this is exactly what it’s been the last 50 years with very little change. The core of our idea for the finals is to make the POS the HUB of the restaurant, with a secure and reliable network to support any communications.

Perhaps the best part of the presentation was that, as we spoke, we could physically see the expressions on their faces change and the light bulbs turn on. Questions changed from ‘who, what, how much’ to ‘how about, do you picture, why not’. With a $17B industry, prospects that are disappointed with current offerings, and no vendor stepping to the plate – the restaurant industry is primed for disruption by a company with the resources of Cisco.

What’s Next?

By close of the meeting, we had talk of thin-net clients deployed with ideas of the “Restaurant in a Box” and alliances with vendor agnostic POS hardware clients. Yes!!!! That’s the picture that we wanted to paint all along. We had some very positive responses from the team, some good chemistry throughout, and we closed the meeting. Jason polished off the meeting letting the team know why a system would have been so essential to his success as a restaurateur.

I don’t believe it could have gone better! There is additional cost/benefit analysis that could be accomplished and we identified the resources to obtain that information to refine our business case. A few thousand dollars in industry reports would need to be scoured with a good analyst to come up with an accurate estimate.

Now we wait! Marthin closed the meeting with a statement of how interesting it was to hear others’ perceptions of what Cisco ‘was’ or ‘did’. We hope that they can visualize themselves into this space. This would solidify Cisco as the data backbone of commerce, first in the food service segment, and beyond to the entire retail industry.

The team ended the phone call and did a 30 minute debriefing. We wait until June to hear the results! Tick… tick… tick…

If Cisco does not choose us, we’ve already discussed the idea with some entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists here regionally. Without Cisco’s network and reach, this may be a tough idea to sell. That is, unless we get the funding and become their customer!

The date is set for our final Cisco I-Prize presentation. I’m already nervous. We thought we were going to have to go up to Chicago or over to Cincinnati, but we found out last night that there’s a Telepresence location right in Carmel!

The technology utilizes high-definition and Cisco’s network to stream the attendees as though you were right in the same room. Telepresence meetings will generate over a billion dollars in revenue for Cisco! It’s going to be difficult for a geek like me not to go gaga over the technology and get on with the meeting.

Click through for a commercial showing what Telepresence is. I’m hoping our meeting is much more upbeat.