One YouTube video can change the world. That’s the concept Stanford University’s 2009 Global Innovation Tournament is operating under — and the E.J. Ourso College of Business is challenging the University community to participate. Students who sign up for the competition will have eight days to create innovative solutions to a mystery challenge using limited resources, according to a news release. The mystery challenge will be revealed this evening, and participants will have to make a YouTube video about their solution.The competition is part of Global Entrepreneurship Week in which more than 75 countries participate through activities and challenges like the Global Innovation Tournament. It runs from Nov. 16 to 22.In the past, the competition has challenged students to create the greatest possible value from common objects like rubber bands and Post-It Notes. This year the challenge will be a global problem the teams will have to come up with ways to solve.The Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute, a branch of the Business College, is organizing the tournament locally. University students’ videos will first be judged by the SEI on Nov. 17, and the winners will go on to be global semifinalists.Global winners will receive a certificate of recognition from Stanford and will be featured on the Global Entrepreneurship Week Web site. “The competition teaches students to have an impact while working with limited time and resources,” SEI associate director Jarett Rodriguez said in a news release. “They need to go beyond just their ideas. They have to implement them.” More than 100 local organizers, including SEI, are participating in the challenge this year, and more than 1,000 people have already signed up. “This is the fourth time we’ve run this competition, and the results are always astounding,” said Tina Seelig, executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and creator of the competition, in a news release. “An event like this demonstrates just how much entrepreneurial potential there is among our young people and how much they are capable of achieving.”University students and organizations interested in participating should e-mail Rodriguez at [email protected] to sign up. When the specific challenge is revealed tonight, teams will make the video and submit it to a specific page on YouTube by Nov. 13 at 9 a.m. The video should be three minutes long or less. Teams will then submit their videos’ URLs to the Global Innovation Tournament’s Web site where they will be judged. Global winners will be announced online on Dec. 3. “This competition is a condensed, entrepreneurship immersion experience,” Rodriguez said. “It’s enormously empowering to realize you can create value from virtually nothing.”—-Contact Kyle Bove at [email protected]