Sometimes the best ideas are scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Back in 2010, Craig Leddy,
president of Interactive TV Works, was in a bar talking with several cable and technology
executives. The discussion centered around the need for the industry to attract young talent and promote innovative thinking. That led to the idea of a case study competition among students who could add their fresh thinking about the industry’s most pressing challenges.
One napkin note and 10 years later, Interactive TV Works has produced 15 Interactive Case
Competitions featuring more than 350 students from 23 top U.S. graduate schools.
The students have tackled such topics as video streaming services, customer care, user interfaces, broadband competition, wireless innovation and, more recently, closing the Digital Divide.
The Interactive Case Competition is a semester-long competition where teams of graduate
students from top prestigious universities engage to solve real-life case studies on TV,
Internet, video, and film entertainment industries. It was founded by Craig Leddy, a leading authority, writer, lecturer, and consultant on television, cable, broadband, wireless, and streaming with 30-plus years of experience in the media and technology space. He saw the need to provide a consulting and networking platform for students to break into as highly competitive and saturated market as the media industry.
The event alone is a 3-month long competition, starting with a kickoff to introduce the case
study, followed by a series of training and regular updates to ensure that teams are hitting their milestones ahead of their final deliverable. Each team must answer a series of questions about the issue, affected audiences, business strategies, and a concluding analysis. The teams are aided by a Coaches Council of top executives who mentor the students. At the end of the program, the teams not only have to deliver a white paper but also a 7-minute presentation about their findings in front of a panel of five judges, who are seasoned professionals with established companies such as Comcast NBCU, Charter Communications, and more.
The students not only have the opportunity to connect with industry leaders but also to show off their ideas and submit their bios to company recruiters for potential internship positions and jobs. One of the more recent case competition challenges is closing the Digital Divide. The students are addressing the problem of Internet connectivity and technology accessibility during the tumultuous COVID times. How can we successfully provide reliable Internet service and offer technology resources to low-income, disadvantaged neighborhoods to close the technology gap between differing socioeconomic communities?
For the fall competition, the students will offer broadband marketing plans and their own fresh thinking live online on November 18. To see them in action, click the RSVP below.