With a specific need to optimise the transportation network to increase speed and reduce cost, Duvenbeck was looking to identify new approaches to an recurringly arising challenge with a clear impact on bottom line results and customer satisfaction. Additional considerations to lower carbon impact through better utilisation of available freight space as well as the optimisation of an integrated data flow between enterprise resource planning systems, went into the overall challenge description.

Re-framing the challenge

With a great deal of interest we had the chance to team up the challenge with the Northeastern University of Boston as well as the University of Applied Sciences (FHNW) in Olten, Switzerland. The master students from Boston had a clear business focus on logistics and optimisation of the transportation network, while the student body from Olten added a more technical and computer science component, resulting into slightly re-framed challenge objectives within the overall scope of the original challenge.

Making it work

After an initial Kick-Off presentation and over the course of a 10 and 15 week (in Boston and Olten respectively) period, students collaborated intensively with the challenge sponsor from Duvenbeck. Leveraging the virtual collaboration space provided by TELANTO as well as regularly speaking during conference calls. Instead of working in a black box, objectives, timelines, deliverables and final outputs were clear to all stakeholders all the way.

Solution proposals

Northeastern (US) students, supervised by Paul Tagliamonte, Executive Professor and connoisseur of the automotive logistics industry have delivered a solution approach with clear value and potential impact in Duvenbeck’s future transportation network operation. The students from FHNW (CH), supervised by Thomas Hanne, Professor of Information System had the opportunity to research and analysis an optimised procedure for data management and providing as well an additional value to Duvenbeck. Both solution proposals from the teams in the States and Switzerland are now transferred into the operations and systems department, where they are currently reviewed for implementation.

The learnings

Future challenges from Duvenbeck will probably more likely be handled directly by the specific department in order to increase the flow of information and communication, which this collaboration with students calls for. Furthermore it was an eye-opener to understand the impact students could provide in a very short time-frame as well as create an intimate employer brand for potential future employees globally and at the company’s doorstep.

Engineering meets Lifestyle

Unlimited Engineering’s team of longboard riders, mountain bikers and hardcore skaters came together to create a solid product they knew would change the way people move in today’s urban landscape. Their modular Kits convert ANY board to electric while adapting to your needs, not the other way around. Designed in Barcelona, one of the top 10 smart cities in the world, the incredible lifestyle and community energy has given them the platform to make their vision a reality.

CHALLENGE TO SOLUTION

Unlimited Engineering is a company based in Barcelona, which builds modular power trains for sustainable transportation. In essence UE builds the design engineer manufacture market and sells power trains to convert any skateboard into a powerful electric skateboard that is also a vehicle for city transportation. The main market consists of young college students in Germany.

UE has little people on the ground and little-to-none access to real knowledge of this German market and thus the decision to become a part of TELANTO, where challenge sponsors of UE have access to incredibly knowledgeable and excited students that form a part of a team and generate market insight and on-the-ground knowledge that is required to enter the German market.

The challenge for the student teams consisted of a market research and launch strategy for the main UE products in the German-speaking markets, so Germany Austria and Switzerland, and the students came back with amazing results. Not only did they provide extremely accurate and detailed insights into this markets how a launch and campaign strategy should look like and also how to invest money to get the most ROI out of them, but they also provided a personal contact which enabled to get deep insights into these users and main use cases in Germany and how they would be using the product surpassing the expectations.

INTERNATIONALIZATION

Autobooker.com was looking into mid-term European expansion opportunities and were considering Sweden, Denmark, Italy, France, UK and Ireland as possible countries where they could expand in the following years. In addition they wanted to validate if the current business model, B2B2C, was the correct one to enter into these new markets, or whether B2C was a better approach.

NEW BUSINESS MODEL

TELANTO’s cloud solution allowed Autobooker.com to know where they should expand and with which business model should they continue. How? TELANTO’s platform allows companies to post their real business challenges so students can solve them providing with innovative and fresh new solutions.

STRATEGIC GUIDANCE

Gathering and condensing socio-demographics data, online & offline travel agencies market shares, online payment methods, types of travel and competitive environment resulted in a strategic guidance document for Autobooker.com. Two geographies in Europe were identified, where sales expectations and other strategic considerations were most favourable. Furthermore the current B2B2C business model continued to project the best market acceptance given the current industry structure.

New Product Development + Design Thinking

A team of international business and technology management Bachelors worked on a “new product development” challenge for the oral hygiene of millennial target segments using the Design Thinking methodology. This extracurricular course did not only expose teams of multidisciplinary students to a new methodology, but also to a real-world challenge of a leading pharmaceutical company. Final prototype outputs, were part of the original scope of the activity from the academic supervisor.

The challenge

Growing revenues and a positive business outlook drives the need and hiring for additional employees. In sight of changing work-models, a smart approach to offer employees office space and possibilities to flexibly use facilities or their home office was required. Somfy needed to build visibility on board level for the “Arbeitswelt 2025” (Future of work 2025) project and required analytical insights particularly regarding the social implications, technical feasibility and others, for employees working from home.

The Global Academic Business Network

A team of international communications and business management Bachelors & Masters worked on a visibility study to provide an outside-in view for the board to consider the multitude of aspects originating from a remote workforce, including social implications, system-/IT and security requirements, etc. Given the remote / virtual collaboration setup of TELANTO and respective teams of students, This collaboration was a pilot in itself, giving an additional benefit and proof of the validity of such work conditions.

Outcomes

The collaboration with the team of student was very good. The produced visibility study as part of Somfy’s “Arbeitswelt 2025” challenge supported a board decision for the implementation of internal task forces, starting to tackle the system-/IT-/security requirements as well as a home office pilot with 20 employees challenging a social behaviour framework.

The challenge

With the model in place, we are ready to take the next step; scaling, fast. But why fast? We need to scale fast in order to succeed (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-point-five-carbon-budget), in other terms, we have four years to make offsetting of our individual carbon foot print a global cause. To succeed we need to activate as much brainpower as possible! And we need to rely on bright minds thinking in new ways, enabling us to take control of the situation caused by ‘conventionally-thinking’ older generations.

The Global Academic Business Network

In this respect, we consider Telanto a second-to-none opportunity! With a global and academically widespread reach we have faith that interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration will lead to innovative and game-changing solutions. The challenge we bring to the table, addresses the need for rapid global adaptation of our solution. In other words, we ask for 1) ideas to new business models capitalizing on our solution, and 2) ideas to marketing campaigns having the potential to attract global attention to this topic, and our solution. We target three segments: – Global organizations – Wealthy philanthropists – Global citizens

EXTENDING UNIVERSITY ALLIANCES

Nexiona as a lean IoT Startup with its innovative product and service portfolio relies on a strong core team and on the collaboration with academia to source innovation and talented minds to continue on their growth path towards a strong national and international IoT player.
Thanks to the Academic Business Network of TELANTO, Nexiona has now the possibility to focus attention on the business, rather than finding the right university collaborations and figure out the modus operandi, legal frameworks along with NDA and IP-Right paperwork, since those aspects are already taken care of in TELANTOs setup.

CHALLENGE TO SOLUTIONS

At the hand of various student teams Nexiona was able to leverage solution proposals within the technology and business development part of the organization

COACHING

TELANTOs certified challenge coaches guide the challenge sponsor through a proven Governance Model, making sure the sponsors become fluid, efficient and ffective in the challenge collaborations. "Challenge Coaching is an absolute must have if you want to accelerate to the full potential of what TELANTO has to offer. “, says Jaume Rey CEO of NEXIONA

The challenge

Professional Service Providers in the Demand Generation business are confronted with rapid changes within their existing customers, who are embracing the digital transformation within their marketing and sales value chain. While traditional go-to-market approaches via tele- or direct marketing are getting out of fashion and are yielding lower results, are looking for solution providers offering services in a new digital environment, that also correspond with their customer base.

The Global Academic Business Network

Over the course of 18 months several internal projects were launched, however those projects did not deliver sufficient depth and innovation to cope with the transformation challenge at hand. Axivas needed to skills and resources, they currently did not have. A decision needed to be taken, whether external consultants should be engaged or new hires be incorporated. A third option – with TELANTO – seemed most relevant after studying the possibility to work with a group of students, proposing fresh ideas for unsolved challenges. With the help of the TELANTO advisors, Axivas defined their challenge at hand, to leap the best result from a collaboration with a academic institution. After the initial kick-off meeting the group of students starting working on Axivas challenge within the milestones and objectives defined prior to the start awarding solutions.

OUTCOMES

After 90 days of collaborating with the group of students, Axivas received a solution proposal along their expected deliverables and content, for implementation (which Axivas opted to do with the winning team of the students). Many aspects of TELANTOs Academic Business Network deliver true Benefit. Contrary to internal teams, the group of students was able to take a look at Axivas’ company assets from a different angle. Through the access to latest trends and research as well as faculty supervision, the students were able to develop an innovative approach. Given the work was handled by students in a different location, it gave the management of Axivas enough space to not intervene in solution proposals, but stayed close enough to monitor progress and work on deliverables. The solution proposed by students is currently being implemented, based on the 3-step plan elaborated by the 5 team members. Axivas added an extraordinary incentive to the mix, it is the group of students themselves, who is part of a multidisciplinary team at Axivas to oversee and manage the implementation. One of the students have already been offered a permanent job at Axivas. A hire, Axivas would not have done, if it wouldn’t be for the prior collaboration and the opportunity to evaluate competences and skills of students, prior engaging in a job commitment.

THE THREAT

By 2050 the worlds' coral reefs will be under critical threat-level based on current projections of the usage, particularly driven by tourism. In order to address this problem the Reef World Foundation is providing education and tools to tour operators in an online fashion, allowing to break away from grant-driven activities and to quickly get a global coverage and impact. 

SUSTAINABLY THINKING STUDENTS

Sustainably thinking and motivated students is exactly what is required right now in order to further develop solutions and scale its implementation to keep more coral reefs to dissappear or to enter into the threat levels. Inspriing people and tourists for more marine conservation

STARTUP REALITY 

There is reportedly more than R40 billion in unclaimed benefits in retirement funds. This problem is not unique to South Africa and not limited to retirement funds alone. In 2015, I founded MyDigiVault and attempted to build an online asset registry and planning tool to solve this challenge. While we failed to build a working prototype, we did finish as a semi-finalist in the global SWIFT Innotribe Challenge, validation of our ability and potential to provide an important innovation in the financial industry. The challenge of building a working prototype remained and I had all but given up.

GLOBAL COLLABORATION WITH TELANTO

Then this year I was contacted by Timo Kerzel and Christian Acosta-Flamma, PhD of TELANTO where they explained how they've taken the next step to #digitize #collaboration between #academia and #industry. As part of their #global #academicbusinessnetwork, I now have access to #students from universities worldwide who will attempt to solve #challenges that we have struggled to overcome as a start-up. This #innovation speaks to #employability and offers a new paradigm for the future of #hiring #graduates.

LEAN START-UP

As a young, lean start-up, we’re always facing the difficult choice between spending hard-earned investor money and doing things on our own. TELANTO offers the chance to get an extra pair of hands. Highly motivated students are eager to make an impact with their contributions. Led by an experienced professor, these teams are accessible through TELANTO’S professional business networking platform. 

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Enry is building a student organization to match social entrepreneurs with triple bottom-line opportunities. We set up business plans, research the market, and build a team of the right people at the right time to establish companies that impact society and our environment positively. With our extremely diverse portfolio, we need flexible access to affordable and high-quality help. This is what we are looking for in our collaboration with TELANTO.

IMAGINCAFE, A PLACE FOR MILLENIALS

As the first financial services subscriber in Spain Caixabank presented a variety of challenges surrounding their recent launch of the ImaginCafé, a place, where technology, creativity and millenails get together. Not only designed for ImaginBank customers it is an open space for anybody to use and spend time for leisure or professional activitiy. 

MULTI-TEAM COLLABORATION

Teams from various universities, amongst other also renowned Barcelona-based Business School IESE was part of tackling a challenge regarding the future development of the ImaginCafe concept.  Whilst the specifics of the challenge must not be disclosed, the variety of ideas and concepts within the solution proposals surprised and surpassed the expectations of the challenge sponsors and gave way for new approaches and developments