Innovation Challenges Overview
1. Introduction
The innovation challenges are at the core mandate of the Industry Academia Platform (IAP) to stimulate open innovation. A challenge will be defined as a project that entails innovation in technology and/or business model to solve a problem with a defined client. Innovation will be done with an eye for commercialization and also developing new skills and knowledge so that participating students are also more marketable in the job market.
The innovation challenges seek to mirror the 21st-century workplace and it does this by promoting an approach which makes sure participants:
- Work in a collaborative group
- Creatively use technology commonly found in the workplace and expose students to new technologies
- Tackle real-world problems using a multidisciplinary approach
- Develop practical solutions to these problems
- Implement and evaluate the solutions
2. Objectives of the Challenges
Innovation challenges have three objectives:
- Enhancing the participation of students in innovation trajectories in industry and contributing significantly to improving productivity.
- Provide students with an opportunity to put their knowledge into practice and increase their employability as a result of skills developed during the execution of the challenges. The challenges will also contribute to a culture of entrepreneurship, empowering students to come up with new business concepts that emanate from the challenges.
- Expose TEIs to industry experience and at the same time upgrade industry practitioners’ skills through collaborations and peer-to-peer learning.
The innovation challenges will provide a collaborative learning experience in which academia (students and teachers) from universities and TVET work together with corporates, SMEs and other stakeholders to learn about compelling issues, propose solutions to real problems, and take action.
a) Challenge Details
- Duration: The challenge will run for 8 weeks.
- Number of participating students: on average 6 students, you are required
- Multi-disciplinary student teams that include engineering/technology/science, business and design, etc.
- Minimum of two Higher Education Institute (HEI’s) universities or TVET involved.
b) Selection criteria for the students participating in groups
In principle, we will endeavour to select student teams – in order to increase the likelihood of them pursuing entrepreneurial activities based on their team’s work during the challenge. However, also individual students can register their interest in participating in a student team, whereby the IAP will act as a match-maker – proposing individual students to student teams that lack certain knowledge or skill.
Selection Criteria
The goal of the filtering and selection process is to source students that will be able to innovate and develop a solution efficiently in conjunction with companies. This requires the students to have the knowledge and skills required by the challenge design. The selection criteria will be based on the following:
- Execution Capability (based on knowledge and skills)
- The motivation
A scoring table for the selection criteria for the students teams will be as represented below
Dimension | Total Mark | Comment | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Execution Capability | Team qualification (Technical expertise) | 10 | Based on level distribution: each level is 3pts , maximum points are 9 , if you have a masters person, you get extra 1 mark | |||||||||
Teamwork |
|
|||||||||||
Motivation | Presentation/Pitch | 30 | Passion can be captured from the presentation | |||||||||
Total | 70 |
*) For each team applying, we will work with the average of the team:
- Team ranking to be selected for the project will be based on the scores given by individual assessors (max 10 for student teams who display a good or excellent knowledge of the subject area).
Selection committee
The selection will be done by key representatives drawn from the corporate organising the Challenge, supported by IAP.
Application Process:
- Form groups of not more than 6 students following the criteria highlighted in table 1,
- Ensure to choose a team lead as well a group name
- Select a challenge you would like to participate in.
- Every student submits the details and motivation on why they are the ideal to solve the challenge and how they contribute to the group.