Expert jury evaluated student projects
From idea to business plan: Engineering students presented their business concepts to an external expert jury.
Being successful in the world of business is not only a matter of having good ideas and the right numbers. Ideas and numbers must also be presented with a clear purpose and in a proper way in written and spoken language. This spring, future business engineers from the study program Innovation and Business received training on business correspondence, the design and structuring of presentations, and the dos and don'ts of giving a talk by experts. Associate Professors Kerstin Fischer and Oliver Niebuhr from the Institute of Design & Communication (IDK) from SDU in Sønderborg joined engineering classes to equip the students with the right communicative tools.
Subsequently, the students tried out their new skills when they, together with students from the Faculty of Humanities, pitched their business plans in front of an external jury with among others Peter Rathje of Project Zero and Michael Hamann from Sønderborg Vækstråd. The pitching session was part the course High Tech Business Venturing, which aims at providing the students with a profound understanding of the role, analytics, and process of business planning that lead to the successful creation of a new business venture.
Winning project combined sports and games
The external jury was impressed with all projects but one stood out due to the convincing presentation and unique combination of sports and games. ProPlay is a product which allows snowboarders, surfers or skaters to monitor their moves and jumps via a sensor system and an app. The system collects data of the movements and if several people go snowboarding together they can do live gaming, so to speak, via ProPlay. The runner-up was the project InnoThermal which recovers waste heat in order to reduce energy consumption.
The external jury consisted of Dennis Westergaard, Syddansk Teknologisk Innovation, Jens Kristian Damsgaard, Science Ventures Denmark, Ken Holm Thomsen, IDEA Entrepreneurship Centre, Michael Hamann, Sønderborg Vækstråd and Peter Rathje, Project Zero.
Facts: The course High Tech Business Venturing reflects the teaching approach of the Innovation & Business group and study programme of the Mads Clausen Institute. It offers students a platform on which to generate ideas and to support them in developing a business case - in the best case a proof-of-concept. One example for such a successful transition into practice is the Green Water project. For more information about High Tech Business Venturing, please contact Professor Alexander Brem at brem@mci.sdu.dk or on ph.6550 9246.
Photo: The ProPlay winning team consisting of students Agata Wróbel, Emil C. Tokebjerg, Malene Christensen, Tugrul Erdem and Þórmundur Sigurbjarnason.