A team of MBA students from Instituto de Empresa created the most innovative and sustainable solutions for Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson in the final round of the Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit competition, taking home $20,000 and the title “2007 Global Champions of Sustainable Innovation.”

Ten teams from top business schools around the world competed March 21-24 in the final round of a sustainable innovation competition held in conjunction with Thunderbird’s first Sustainable Innovation Summit.

MBA candidate Philipp Pausder, team captain from Instituto de Empresa, which is in Madrid, Spain, said the questions posed by Johnson & Johnson and Merck were quite tough and that the team had to dedicate long hours to develop the winning concepts. “All of this work paid off, and it is just a great feeling,” he said. “It is just amazing how much we learned in that relatively short period of time — the research, our debates, and by talking to the speakers and judges. We all feel that sustainable innovation is needed, and being able to foster our abilities to innovate in a sustainable manner as part of the learning experience is just great.”

Teams in the final round of the competition were challenged to develop the most innovative and sustainable business plans that addressed real-life challenges faced by Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Inc. Merck asked the MBA teams to develop a plan for the company to shape the overall healthcare landscape in the emerging markets of China and India, thereby producing sustainable markets for its products. Johnson & Johnson’s posed the question of how the company could provide its high-tech health care solutions in emerging and developed economies at an affordable price for growing middle and lower income consumer groups.

The winning solution for Merck suggested the company could become a knowledge leader in rural markets by integrating technology to educate the rural consumers about health-care practices and solutions available for their unmet needs.

The solution the Instituto de Empresa team developed for Johnson & Johnson had the company closing the affordability gap by partnering with other large corporations to provide affordable payment plans for employees in the middle and lower income markets.

“Innovative, real-world solutions presented by the student teams that participated in the Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit exceeded our expectations in many ways,” said Neil Currie, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson. “We all gained new insights that will contribute to immediate action in the short term as well as help shape our responses to challenges that corporate and community leaders -- including the students who participated -- will continue to wrestle with for years to come.”

Currie said that Johnson & Johnson plans to be a sponsor at next year’s competition. “It was a privilege to participate in the creative process with the best and brightest MBA talent and experts from around the world,” he said.

An MBA team from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University placed second, winning $5,000, and a graduate team from Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, placed third, wining $3,000.

Teams in the finals included: a Thunderbird Global MBA team from Costa Rica, a second team from Duke, and teams from Vanderbilt, Purdue, the University at Buffalo the State University of New York, University of Florida, and Bainbridge Graduate Institute. In all, more than 85 teams representing 45 universities in 13 countries competed in the competition.

The winners were announced March 24 at an awards dinner marking the final event of the Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit, a four-day event that showcased real-world innovative business solutions that reflect a commitment to economically, environmentally and socially-sound business practices.

“The summit demonstrated the power of integrating business thinking and sustainability thinking,” said Greg Unruh, director of Thunderbird’s Lincoln Center for Ethics in International Management. “The teams showed that real gains come from innovative commercial solutions that simultaneously create business value as well as collateral social and environmental value. The Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit and the participants are overcoming the myth that profit and sustainability are mutually exclusive.”

Sponsorship partners of the Summit included Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co. Inc., BillMatrix, Deloitte, Honeywell, Xerox and Net Impact.