Idea Incubator Co-Lab at the GCC 2014 Kicks Off

Even the best ideas have pitfalls. The Melton Foundation Idea Incubator is where Melton Fellows identify - and solve - them.

Every year at the Global Citizenship Conference (GCC), we devote a special space for "springboarding" great ideas: the Idea Incubator Co-Lab. Fellows develop and refine their idea to experience success as well as failure in the early stages of the idea development.

Session #1 began with pairing the mentors with incubatees and discussing the different aspects of their projects -- the pitch, analysis of the surveys conducted, the Needs-Approach-Benefits-Competition (NABC) framework, and applying the business model canvas. The pairings rotated so that all incubatees had the chance to interact with all mentors and discuss the specifics of their projects. In Session #2 the incubatees shared their hopes, expectations (and insecurities) about their project, an important part of the Incubator process.

Afterwards, the incubatees shared their specific plans for the GCC -- who are the people that they want to connect with, how much funding they need, what assumptions they want to validate, what the larger purpose of their project was, and the timelines that they had in mind. Additionally, the incubatees had the opportunity to make their important two-minute pitch. These were evaluated and recorded by a panel of mentors plus the other incubatees.

Finally, with the feedback from all the other participants, in the last session each incubatee was able to work on improving their pitch -- through the next week, each will prepare their action plan to implement a pilot version of their project idea in the months following the GCC.

This year's Idea Mentors include: Victor Valenzuela, Divya Tyam, Sartaj Anand, Lars Dietzel

This year's Incubatees are: Nickhil Sharma, Diego Cantos, Hari Ravikumar, Javier Mora