Red Hat Challenge

March 20th, 2007

Last week I was asked join a team of fellow student to join the Red Hat Challenge, a competition open to current business school students. The “challenge” is this: come up with a new idea to help Red Hat make money. You get two weeks to work on something and package it into a 5 page business recommendation. If they like you, you get invited to the Red Hat Summit to deliver your idea in person, and oh yeah, a check for $20,000. Booya Jim!

Early on, our team spent some time looking at the obvious plays in the market: Linux on the enterprise desktop, more stack-based acquisitions like JBoss, international expansion, etc. After a while, and listening to the conference call on the challenge held by Red Hat execs, it’s clear they are looking for something they haven’t thought of before. Now that’s a challenge! Suddenly our group meetings have morphed into crazy brainstorming sessions, where ideas are bantered about, pumped up, hollered down, debated fiercely, then divvied up for followup research. I can’t tell you how much fun that is, to try to come up with a business idea something so outlandish that you actually gasp out loud when you hear it.

I’ll likely post the results here just to preserve the time we tried to change the world.

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