Creative Spark Challenge

The “Creative Spark Challenge” encourages students to design and create a new interactive game that will ignite creativity, teamwork and problem solving in teenagers. Students are asked to assemble a team, and create a new, interactive game to teach and motivate its players to communicate, create, problem solve and improve the world.




The future of our students, workforce, nation and world is on the line. Students are preparing to enter a dramatically changing workplace, one that will require a new, dynamic skill set. A 2006 poll of 431 employers around the world reported “workers of the incoming generation… sorely lack in workplace skills.” Three-fourths of these employers judged creativity and innovation to be among the top-five skills most important in the current climate, and they believe these skills will continue to increase in importance for future graduates (eSchool News, October 2006). According to a growing cadre of government, business and academic thinkers, the “new basic skills of the 21st century” are creativity, innovation, teamwork, communication and the ability to manage change.




Participants will design a prototype game, assign a price point, solicit sponsors, and create up to a 30-second commercial to be posted on YouTube. A public voting forum will determine the winner of the activity. A spokesperson from the winning team will receive an all-expense-paid trip to Destination ImagiNation’s Global Finals to present the team’s product to 16,000 students and supporters. Destination ImagiNation, Inc. will then develop the product and offer it for sale from its Web site.





A representative from the team that produces the game with the highest number of final votes will receive an all-expense-paid trip to Destination ImagiNation Global Finals 2010 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where s/he will demonstrate the team’s game to 17,000 attendees and also appear on a Webcast. The winning game will be produced and sold by Destination ImagiNation, Inc. Proceeds from the sales will be used to support the GEW and Destination ImagiNation Challenge program.




The deadline to enter is Nov. 22, right at the end of Global Entrepreneurship Week. At that point, all the videos will be up for judging on YouTube, with the winner selected Dec. 9.