200 bright and talented master students from the Marketing Strategy & Innovation course at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics joined forces for 7 weeks and worked in 39 teams to provide outside-in, innovative ideas and solutions for one company: energy supplier Essent and E.On.
The teams were guided in a digital innovation sprint of 7 weeks, based on design thinking and coached by innovation trainers from UMIO’s Service Science Factory (SSF) and with live coaching moments with Essent professionals, resulting in a super powerful cocreation and explosion of fruitful ideas.
Click here to see the ideas of the 39 student teams, wrapped in video pitches and one-page summaries.
Stephan Segbers (COO Essent): “For me personally, it was not only a lot of fun but also very insightful. I am impressed by the quality of the pitches created and the digital skills exhibited.”
Accelerating Innovation
“A hackathon provides a powerful, co-creative means to accelerate innovation. Where businesses benefit hugely from the brainpower of 200 bright master students, their fresh thinking and outside-in perspective. The power pitches the teams prepared to convey their ideas to the company are very powerful and are captured in the idea vault in a webpage. This way the company can easily share the students’ output among colleagues and really build on the ideas of the various teams”, says Sabine Janssen, Head of UMIO’s Service Science Factory. SSF coordinated this hackathon and embedded it in the Strategic Marketing Master programme of Maastricht University School of Business and Economics.
Taking the next step
Interested to find out more about the power of hackathons? Check out this video or contact our colleagues at the Service Science Factory.
