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Cricket Reactor Inventor Says $1mil Prize Winners Stole His Work

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-just-not-cricket dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A group of Montreal MBA students took home this year's million-dollar Hult Prize, winning a competition for socially innovative business ideas that calls itself 'one of the planet's leading forces for good.' But now the ethics of the winners and the prize committee are being called into question. McGill PhD researcher Jakub Dzamba says that after he supplied the idea and design behind their pitch, products of years of development work, the team reneged on its promises to make him a partner and is instead taking credit for his work. Apparently, Hult knew about the issue before it awarded the prize." Yes, these are the students whose win garnered $1 million awarded by Bill Clinton.

9 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Philosophy of selfishness = anything goes. by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a necessary consequence of embedding a philosophy of selfishness that people will ultimately bend the rules in their favour.

    An MBA school is one of the most optimised breeding grounds for this behaviour.

    1. Re:Philosophy of selfishness = anything goes. by fredprado · · Score: 3, Insightful

      On the contrary. Selfishness as Ayn Rand describes, is based on taking responsibility and credit for you and your actions, and not behaving like a child and depending on someone else to provide for you and to take responsibility for your well being.

      And if this person was not selfish at all he would have let his team take credit for the work, win the million dollar prize and go on and never even mentioned it. It was selfish and nothing else that made him take action and claim to himself the credit for his work, and that is a good thing.

  2. This is a problem in some academic circles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not giving credit seems to be often "practiced" in some academic circles. I won't say all, because I don't know, but I have seen way to many instances of this, and was also a victim a few times.

    Researchers can be roughly divided into two types: creative and non creative. The latter is usually not very intelligent and even the simplest equations or physical phenomena may baffle them. But, they make it up by following the orders of their superiors, brown-nosing, schmoozing and taking credit for other's work. The latter is critical, because they would be unable to do any work by themselves.

    1. Re:This is a problem in some academic circles by Coeurderoy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The main issue is that creative people tend to be busy being creative,
      wherease non creative people have time for "politics"

      And of course there is the problem of some creative people deciding "darn it, lets creativelly fuck'em all"

  3. Re:What did you expect? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A good MBA will not only screw you but also drill you on why you deserved that, mill you for arguing with him, and fasten the blame on someone else.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  4. Execution not ideas. Get it in writing. by seoras · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Who's side do you come down on with Zuckerberg & Winklevoss twins?

    Patent trolls? Lodsys going after the small developers after already having Apple pay for in-app license?

    I did an MBA a couple of years ago.
    It included a course on "ethics" which really did nothing other than help you self justify any action you took as being ok and easy on your conscious.
    I still write software, independently now. I did the MBA to learn how "they" think.

    As a lawyer once told me there's no such thing as "justice", only law which isn't the same thing.

    Moral of this story is get a contract signed before you go sharing, especially from MBA types.

    At the end of the day it's about execution, not the idea.
    I come down on Zuckerberg's side.
    I think patents should be abolished.

  5. Contradiction in terms...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    'one of the planet's leading forces for good.'

    a million dollars

    You know, If I were a supernatural evil being dedicated to the complete overthrow of the human race, one of the cleverer ideas my minions might have come up with would be to go around looking for 'Good' people and giving each of them a lot of money.

    It's the most effective method I know of bringing out the worst in everybody.....

  6. PhD or always honest MBAs? by Phoeniyx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I dunno about you. But, "in general", I have a tendency to believe a single PhD candidate over 5 MBAs. The more MBAs there are, even less I believe that group.

  7. Well, the prize *is* for "business ethics" by Eternal+Vigilance · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The mandate of the competition," Dzamba notes, "is to instill business ethics among college and university students..."

    Hmm, steal the winning idea, take the prize money, threaten to sue the original inventor...I'd say the competition succeeded.