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Philadelphia Open Innovation Tournament 2025

✨ A weekend where bright ideas collide with opportunity.

🏆 Prize Opportunities

  • $100K in cloud compute credits
  • $25K seed investment
  • Startup acceleration
  • Investor connections
Secure your spot

📋 Quick facts

Two days. Two hundred innovators. One spotlight. Day 1 is for everyone; Day 2 is a private finale for the top seven.

Date & Venue

📅 Oct 25 (10 AM–5 PM) & Oct 26 (10 AM–2 PM)
Racquet Club of Philadelphia

Cost

💸 $20 pass
🍻 +$20 Happy‑Hour wristband

Capacity

👥 200 participants → 7 finalists

Dress code

🕴️ Smart casual (details)

🗓️ Weekend Flow

Sat 10 AM–12 PM Ideation sprint & AI-powered rapid prototyping

Sat 12 PM–1 PM Lunch & "From Idea to Business" session (while judges deliberate)

Sat 1 PM–5 PM 1-minute pitches & participant voting (participants select who advances!)

Sat 5 PM–7 PM Happy‑Hour with open bar 🍻

Sun 10 AM–2 PM Finalist pitches (invite‑only)

Sun 5 PM Winners Announced

2024 sold out – snag your ticket while you can!

🏆 Tournament Prizes

AWS Credits: Up to $100,000 in cloud credits from the AWS Activate Program

Seed Investment: $25,000 funding opportunity with NextFab Ventures (including product development for hardware/greentech)

Gust Launch: Free incorporation and one year of legal, cap table & fundraising management from Gust

Startup Acceleration: Gust Mission Control access for 5 teams (CEO school & mentoring)

Investor Network: Direct connections to Philadelphia's top VCs and angels

🚀 How to Win

Five moves the champs used last year — tap to expand. 🎥 5‑min guide

Idea Generation 💡 — Wharton Professor's AI Prompt

Prof. Ethan Mollick from Wharton recommends this powerful prompt structure for product ideation:

Generate new product ideas with the following requirements:
  The product will target college students in the United States. It should be a physical good, not a service or software. I'd like a product that could be sold at a retail price of less than about USD 50. The ideas are just ideas. The product need not yet exist, nor may it necessarily be clearly feasible.
  Follow these steps. Do each step, even if you think you do not need to:
  1.First, generate a list of 100 ideas (short title only).
  2.Second, go through the list and determine whether the ideas are different and bold. Modify the ideas as needed to make them bolder and more different. No two ideas should be the same. This is important!
  3.Next, give the ideas a name and combine it with a product description. The name and idea are separated by a colon and followed by a description. The idea should be expressed as a paragraph of 40–80 words.
  Do this step by step!
  • Simply modify the target market, product type, and price point for your needs.
  • This structured approach forces the AI to think broadly before refining.
  • The step-by-step instructions prevent AI from skipping important ideation stages.
  • Requiring uniqueness and boldness pushes past generic first-round ideas.
Synthetic Customer Feedback 🗣️ — AI as your ideal users

Recent academic research shows that AI can effectively simulate diverse customer perspectives. Try this prompt structure:

I'm developing [product name], which is [brief description].
  
  You will now act as my ideal customer persona with these characteristics:
  - Demographics: [age, gender, location, income level]
  - Goals: [what they're trying to accomplish]
  - Pain points: [current frustrations]
  - Values: [what matters most to them]
  
  As this persona, please:
  1. Evaluate my product concept honestly
  2. Tell me what you like and dislike about it
  3. Describe how you would use it in your daily life 
  4. Share how much you would pay for it and why
  5. Explain what would make you choose this over alternatives
  
  Be specific and constructive. Don't hold back criticism—I need authentic feedback.
  • Create 5-7 diverse personas to identify blind spots in your concept.
  • Research suggests AI-generated feedback can surface more unique issues than traditional methods.
  • Use this approach to rapidly iterate before real customer testing.
  • Generate likely objections from different stakeholder groups.
Prototyping ⚡ — Make a landing page in minutes

For an example of what can be done with almost no effort see our sample landing page and how it was made by Manus with two prompts → see the full process here.

  • Generate UI mockups, product visualizations, and branding elements.
  • Develop marketing copy, documentation, and user guides.
  • Create code snippets or entire proof-of-concept applications.
Stress‑Test 🛡️ — Debate to improve
  • Ask AI to be competitor, skeptic, and regulator—patch every hole.
  • Have AI evaluate your concept against potential competitors.
  • Identify technical, operational, or market barriers.
  • Use AI to highlight potential compliance issues.
Nail the Narrative 🎤 — Pitch like a trailer
  • Problem → aha → impact. Rehearse Q&A with ChatGPT as the grumpiest investor.
  • Have AI help craft a compelling story around your innovation.
  • Generate professional slides and visual aids.
  • Practice with AI by simulating judge questions.
Recommended AI Toolkit 🔧
  • 📱 Smartphone.
  • 🤖 Frontier AI: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Gemini Advanced, Mistral Le Chat Pro and/or Deepseek.
  • 🛠️ Agentic AI: Manus for research and quick landing pages.

We highly recommend using the paid tiers of these tools for access to the most advanced models and features.

🏢 Competition Categories

While you can pitch ideas in any area, these categories are more likely to receive support and funding in Philadelphia's ecosystem:

🌿GREENTECH
🎓EDTECH
🏥HEALTHCARE
⚖️LEGALTECH
SPORTSTECH

🤝 Our Sponsors

Note: This list will be updated as sponsorships are confirmed for 2025

📊 2024 Highlights

📎 Other Resources

Our Mission

"Our goal is to accelerate Philadelphia's growth by spotlighting and empowering the city's most promising innovators."

The Philadelphia Open Innovation Tournament is inspired by the framework developed by Profs. Karl Ulrich and Christian Terwiesch at UPenn. It brings together diverse minds to solve real-world challenges through friendly competition.

Join us in this exhilarating journey of innovation and impact. Be part of shaping Philadelphia's future!

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