Problem solving platform connects businesses with talented students

MindSumo is a new platform on which businesses can invite students to solve problems, while those students are given the opportunity to show off their ideas to potential employers.

Regular readers of Springwise will already be well aware of how crowdsourcing can be used by businesses and organizations to solve challenging problems, and $300 House would be one recent example of this. Now we’ve come across MindSumo, a new platform which hopes to be as beneficial to those contributing solutions as it is for the companies hosting challenges. MindSumo is a new website dedicated to connecting organizations with students. Businesses can invite students to solve problems, while those students are given the opportunity to show off their ideas to potential employers. Companies begin by logging onto the website and proposing challenges to the community. Students can then offer their ideas for solutions, be inspired by their peers’ creativity, and have direct contact with businesses. As an extra incentive, cash prizes are also on offer to university-goers getting involved. Led by Stanford University graduate Trent Hazy, through the college’s StartX project, the site is currently available to students at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and University of California, Berkeley. The concept is explained further in the video below: MindSumo claim that a company’s ability to predict candidate quality increases by 37-40 percent when there is a sample of that person’s work available. An idea to replicate in your country? Spotted by: Channing Hancock