Technovation offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the skills they need to emerge as tech entrepreneurs and leaders. Every year we invite girls to identify a problem in their community, and then challenge them to solve it.
The Technovation challenge is an international competition in which girls between the ages of 10 and 18, from more than 100 countries, participate. Technovation offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the skills they need to emerge as entrepreneurs and technology leaders. Each year the girls are invited to identify a problem in their community and to solve it. The girls work in teams to build a mobile application and a business plan to launch this application.
Technovation is a program ran by Iridescent, a non-profit educational association that prepares engineers to provide cutting-edge STEM training to disadvantaged girls, boys and their families. Associations such as the Peace Corps or UNESCO support this initiative, which has collaborators such as Google, Verizon, IBM or Walmart, among others.
Technovation's curriculum takes students through 4 stages of launching a mobile app startup, inspired by the principles of design thinking:
- Ideation: Identify a problem
- Technology: Develop a mobile app solution
- Entrepreneurship: Build a business plan to launch the app
- Pitch: Bring the business to market
Technovation has a profound impact on students and mentors.
A five year look-back survey of alumni showed that while most students had little or no experience with computer science before Technovation, their experience with Technovation had a powerful effect. After participating in Technovation, participants were more interested in:
- Computer Science (78%)
- Entrepreneurship (70%)
- Business Leadership (67%)
Additionally, after participating in Technovation:
- 26% of alumnae in college major in CS. This is 65x the national rate of 0.4% of first-year female college students majoring in CS.
- 58% of alumnae enroll in subsequent Computer Science courses.
The first edition of the competition was held in 2010 in San Francisco. In 2015, the documentary CodeGirl, directed by filmmaker Lesley Chilcott, was released, featuring some of the stories of the more than 5,000 young people from more than 60 countries who took part in that year's edition.
Founded by Iridiscent
Twitter: @technovation
Website: https://technovationchallenge.org/
Case study date: June 2018
