The Blue Ocean High School Entrepreneur Pitch Competition has become the largest virtual high school business competition in the world.
The 2020/2021 edition of the competition has reached a tipping point with nearly 2,000 students comprising 500 teams from 36 countries and over 300 high schools submitting their blue ocean pitches.
Participants come from all corners of the globe, from Ireland to Uganda, Italy, Egypt, Myanmar, Japan, and Australia, with students representing the six continents, making the competition truly global.
139 of the US News and World Report Top 250 STEM high schools in the US have participated in the competition making it highly prestigious.
The competition gives high school students the chance to present their innovative business ideas, hone their pitching skills, earn cash prizes, and build resumes that stand out from the crowd when applying for college. Most of all they learn how to create businesses that stand out from the competition, creating blue oceans of new market space.
This year more than 2000 students submitted their pitches for the competition and all blue ocean pitches were judged by a panel of distinguished judges comprised of professors, businesspeople, serial entrepreneurs, and thought leaders.
The WINNERS of 2020-2021 Blue Ocean Entrepreneurship Competition
We are proud to announce the winners of the 2020-2021 edition! The panel of judges had a very hard time selecting the winners. Check out the inspiring winning blue ocean pitches below.
1st Place Winner: Kelpnet
Jessica Liu
White Oaks Secondary School, Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
640,00 tons of nets are discarded each year in the US alone killing millions of marine animals. So why is the fishing industry stuck with 1960s net technology and what could take its place? Kelpnet is the brilliant and winning pitch from Jessica Liu, that looks at how biodegradable netting could open up a blue ocean in the fishing industry. Huge congratulations to Jessica for this superb pitch and winning idea!
2nd Place Winner: Inside The Box
Victoria Hagenlocker, Porter Bowen, Sabrina Sharma, Alejandro Antorcha, Daniel Hagenlocker
Gulliver Preparatory, Miami, Florida, USA.
We can order almost any product online and have it delivered in days, but the environmental impact of all the packaging is a growing problem. Victoria Hagenlocker, Porter Bowen, Sabrina Sharma, Alejandro Antorcha, Daniel Hagenlocker propose a brilliant and innovative solution that uses overproduced crops such as wheat and corn to make a sustainable, biodegradable box. Many congratulations to our second-place winners for their pitch, Inside the Box!
3rd Place Winner: Upcycle Insulation
Katherine Shaw, Emily Shaw
IWest Essex High School, Caldwell, NJ, USA.
Heating and cooling account for the bulk of our energy use, contributing 62% to New York’s greenhouse gas emissions. Our third-place winners, Katherine Shaw, Emily Shaw, pitched Upcycle Insulation, insulation that uses recycled cardboard to reduce energy loss and lower carbon emissions. Congratulations to Katherine and Emily for this inspiring pitch!
Best Social Pitch: WithMe
Harish Kolli, Kaitlin Tan, Mahi Ravi
Westwood High School, Austin, TX, USA.
Imagine your wife, sister or daughter walking back to her car through an empty parking lot. Are today’s safety products practical and effective at fighting harassment against women? Not according to Harish Kolli, Kaitlin Tan, Mahi Ravi, who delivered this year’s best social pitch. WithMe is a safety app that addresses the needs of the target market, adding multiple levels of security for the user. Congratulations to the team for this awesome and potentially lifesaving idea!
Best Healthcare Pitch: Med Alert
Vedant Nahar, Ankit Macherla, Lucas Walsh
Scripps Ranch High School, San Diego, CA, USA.
More than half of senior citizen residents in nursing homes fall victim to preventable errors every year because of verbal miscommunications and other mistakes in delegating tasks. Med Alert is an app that lets users create and delegate tasks in real-time and on the go, promoting teamwork in nursing facilities. Med Alert is the brilliant and potentially lifesaving idea from Vedant Nahar, Ankit Macherla, Lucas Walsh, and the winner of this year’s best healthcare pitch. Congratulations!
Best Metallurgy Pitch: Solar Shock
Kevin Lu, Ashutosh Kandala, Arvin Zhang, Henry Liu
Portola High School, Irvine, CA, USA.
Solar power is one of the most common and effective renewable energies but few people know that dust collection can greatly reduce the efficiency of solar panels. Solar Shock is the solution proposed by Kevin Lu, Ashutosh Kandala, Arvin Zhang, Henry Liu, and the winner of this year’s best metallurgy pitch. Congratulations to the team for this bright and brilliant idea!
Most Popular Pitch: AnomaTek
Tanish Jain, Sumanth Kalluru, Nimesh Rudra, Sashvad Satish Kumar
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA, USA.
On top of this social prize, there were also two school prize categories: The Top 8 schools that brought in the most submissions, and one special prize for the school that had the most students or teams that made the Top 25 pitches. Congratulations to all of them!
Top 8 High Schools with the Most Submissions
- Irvington High School, Freemont, CA, USA.
- Ward Melville High School, East Setauket, New York, USA.
- Spanish River Community High School, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.
- South Brunswick High School, Monmouth, New Jersey, USA.
- Herningsholm Erhversgymnasium, Herning, Denmark.
- Barrington High School, Barrington, Il, USA
- Dougherty Valley High School, San Ramon, CA, USA
- Monte Vista High School, Cupertino, CA, USA
Top High School most Pitches in the Top 30
- Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA, USA.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Warm thanks to the judges and to the teachers involved for guiding your students.
And big thanks to all the participants. You may not have won this year, but we hope you had fun getting your innovative ideas heard, and learned a lot in the process. You are an inspiration.
Last but not least, a VERY special thanks to Ted Dacko, the Executive Director of the Blue Ocean Entrepreneurship Competition, for leading this incredible competition.
For all high school students who are not graduating this year, stay tuned and register for next year’s competition!
Watch the playlist to see all of the Top 10 pitches:
The Competition’s Vision for the Future
Ted Dacko, the Executive Director for the Blue Ocean High School Entrepreneurship Competition for the last 3 years has a goal to bring the competition to every high school in America and to every country in the world, offering smart, innovative young people the opportunity and incentive to create business ideas that can change the world.
The Blue Ocean High School Entrepreneurship Competition was started in 2014 by Nicholas Benavides, a high school student in Maryland, before going on to Stanford University.
The popularity of the student-run competition saw it grow leaps and bounds such that the students turned it into a formal nonprofit, bringing on board professional leadership.
What students have to say
What teachers have to say
