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June 19, 2001

NetVestibule wins Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Innovation Award

BARCELONA – The European Business Plan of the Year 2001 took place on June 18th and 19th at the IESE campus in Barcelona, hosting 13 teams from 13 top European business schools. The event staged various teams to present their business plans to a panel of industry, banking and consulting professionals. On the first day, the judges were asked to select the 6 finalists which were to present again on the following day for a final selection of 4 prize recipients. A first classical stream of awards was to be allocated to the most promising business plans, with a winner, a first and a second runner-up. These were respectively awarded to Imperial College, IESE Barcelona, and London Business School. Another type of award was to be granted to the most innovative business plan. This year, INSEAD took home the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Innovation Award with the NetVestibule business plan.

Christoph Zott, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD, had selected and coached a “winner team” that was already formed within the New Ventures elective class. Led by Yann Lechelle, the NetVestibule team (pictured left) also comprising Neela Murkherjee, Laszlo Kreiner and Felix Vogler, demonstrated at the competition an innovative product and development plan likely to pioneer a new market. In a nutshell, the NetVestibule product offers an all-in-one ASP solution for the admissions departments of higher education institutions that wish to offer an interactive and online platform to their admitted candidates, a sort of highly specialized e-CRM system. Once in place, this platform allows the incoming class to optimize its logistics in a peer-to-peer fashion before reaching campus, leveraging the network effect that the embryonic community can provide, but also accelerating the creation of the network itself. This type of platform is especially useful for institutions like INSEAD, with a student population coming from all over the planet, and spanning over 70 nationalities. In fact, the INSEAD prospects have been benefiting from this platform since 2000.

Posted by root at June 19, 2001 07:40 PM

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