Submissions open for Diamond Challenge

The Diamond Challenge is offered as a philanthropic education initiative by Horn Entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware. As such, it provides free, open-access resources for students, educators and practitioners of entrepreneurship. Participation in the Diamond Challenge involves learning from the pursuit of new ideas. It also involves the creation, submission and presentation of original content in the form of business and social venture concepts. 

The Diamond Challenge provides a unique opportunity for teens to learn about entrepreneurship while putting their ideas into action. While many entrepreneurship programs focus on principles of small business management, the Diamond Challenge focuses on unleashing creativity, encouraging a mindset of abundance and self-determination, and promoting purposeful entrepreneurial action.

Prize Information

Top prizes fund ideas and higher education scholarships.

• 1st place: $12,000
• 2nd place: $8,500
• 3rd place: $4,000

Requirements

• Teams must be comprised of 2-4 high school students typically between 14-18 years of age at the time of the submission deadline, and must be enrolled in an official high school/secondary education institution or program for the duration of the Diamond Challenge.
• Teams require one adult advisor (21 years of age or older) who is in a position to provide the opportunity to participate and broadly available to offer support to the team. Teams may have more than one advisor, however, only one may be included in your official team submission. The advisor you include will be considered a main point of contact for the competition.
• Any given student may participate on just one team (and therefore submit just one concept) per competition cycle/year.
• Teams may be comprised of students from more than one school.
• Only concepts that have been conceived by the members of the team may be submitted to the Diamond Challenge. If a submission has also been conceived by members not participating in the Diamond Challenge, their full legal names must be disclosed during submission so as to avoid potential conflicts of interest and/or potential legal challenges at later stages of the competition.
• Businesses and social concepts must NOT have generated more than $100,000 in total revenue prior to the submission deadline.

Pitch Rules

Events will be updated as in-person or virtual events within the competition platform before the submission deadline.

Competing in-person. Participating in an in-person pitch event is an option for teams from all around the world who are able to travel to a pitch event location in their country or region. Teams who choose to compete in an in-person pitch event must adhere to the following rules:

• Pitches are strictly limited to 5 minutes. Teams are free to use their creativity as they see fit to best portray their concept, which includes presentation software (e.g., PowerPoint, Keynote), as well as display boards, prototypes, images, sounds, motion graphics, etc.
• Judges’ questions and team member responses will be strictly limited to 3 minutes.
• Only team members that pitch are eligible to answer judges’ questions during the 3-minute question and answer section of the competition. Team members that do not participate in the pitch are not eligible to respond to judge questions.

For more information, visit University of Delaware.