"The Pitch" Preparation for Genius Hour

Students used their class time today to develop their “pitch” about their Genius Hour. The idea is that an innovator with a great idea might find himself/herself in an elevator with a powerful person who might be interested in investing money in a promising proposition. (Talk about being in the right place at the right time?!) The innovator has a very short period of time to convince this investor to buy into the idea. It is time to deliver an “elevator pitch.”

For this assignment, I am asking my students to prepare a pitch about their Genius Hour project in 30 seconds. I will be asking students to privately deliver their pitch to me. Here’s a video explaining the elevator pitch from Sean Wise, a business journalist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto, and the host of Canada's version of Shark Tank.

Wise states, good elevator pitches have two parts: the pain statement and value proposition. He says that first, the individual lays out a problem that needs to be solved. Then he/she establishes how the idea is going to solve it.

Wise says that elevator pitches should be succinct, easy to understand, greed inducing, and irrefutable. My students may find that last part confusing, but I’ll help them understand that good ideas can equal MONEY. This is an opportunity for students to think through an idea enough to try to “sell it” it me. At this point, I will soon be vetting the ideas of my students. I will help them to think it through. (A big shout out to Kevin Brookhouser for his great ideas in shaping this lesson.)

Here are some student samples from a document that I created to help students plan their pitches:

Here is the link for this document.

My students left school with a much better idea of what their project will look like. Some of them want to start working on it this weekend! Next Genius Hour - "The Pitch!"