An elevator pitch is so named because it is delivered in the time span of a hypothetical elevator trip.

CNN: Going up! The elevator pitch

Balancing strategic and tactical items can be challenging, the same way coming up with an elevator pitch your grandma can understand is a challenge.

FORBES: 5 Things I Learned About Running Startup Board Meetings

The bottom line is that an elevator pitch is extremely important and worth taking the time to develop so it is easily understood and projects exactly what it is that you do.

FORBES: How to Create an Elevator Pitch

For many contestants, it was their first time to make an elevator-pitch video from scratch.

FORBES: 170 Teams Enter The Entrepreneurs Challenge

If ever there were an elevator to pitch in, it was that one at the New York Public Library on that day.

FORBES: Stephen Schwarzman: A Billionaire Who Checks Report Cards

The evangelists for Tech City certainly deliver an impressive elevator pitch.

BBC: Tech City's silicon dreams

An elevator-pitch definition of service oriented architecture would be: Loosely-coupled services with well-defined interfaces that provide business functionality and can be shared or reused across and beyond the enterprise.

FORBES: Before There Was Cloud Computing, There Was SOA

However, one school has just taken a different approach with an innovative new contest -- the so-called Elevator Pitch.

CNN: Going up! The elevator pitch

It is a popular concept -- earlier this year, students at Columbia Business School took part in a pitch competition in which the pleas for investment were actually delivered in an elevator, although these were filmed rather than having all the judges crammed inside as well.

CNN: Going up! The elevator pitch