The DTE Ideation Days provide students with a perfect opportunity to generate digital business ideas. During three intensive days, Max Wittrock, passionate and experienced entrepreneur (a.o. cofounder of mymusli) and investor, taught students the necessary tools for coming up with creative solutions and transferring them into innovative business ideas.
The main focus of the first day of the Ideation Days Event was getting to know the other participants as well as applying techniques that spur creativity. For instance, in one exercise students developed creative business ideas based on everyday terms – such as bread - and explored their digital potential. In doing so, it became apparent that creativity is not just pure coincidence, but rather triggered through structured and concentrated work. In that sense, it is hardly surprising that the students were able to develop a wide array of creative ideas, which they had to validate during the course of the following day. The generated ideas ranged from customizable toilet paper over smart irrigation systems for flowers and a stylish waste separation system to an innovative recruiting-app. At the start of the second day, the students formed teams around their preferred ideas while taking the necessary competencies to develop their ideas further into account. They spent the rest of the day working on their unique selling propositions as well as developing a persona of their respective target customers. At the end of the day, the ideas were specific enough to develop the first prototypes. After this extensive experience of the first phase of the founding process, the teams were ready to pitch their ideas on the third day, with the goal to convince a jury consisting of experts from research and practice. The team “Junk Punk” was able to assert themselves against the other teams with their innovative and stylish waste separation system.
We would like to thank all participants for the successful workshop and are looking forward to meeting some familiar faces in the DTE “Honours Degree”. During the 9 month of the DTE “Honours Degree” the students, supported professionally by researchers and practitioners, will work intensively on their business idea with the goal to further develop and refine it. Special thanks go to Max Wittrock for the organization and execution of the workshop! Furthermore, we thank ZD.B for its financial support, as well as INN.KUBATOR Passau and PADU (Theresienstraße) respectively, where we were able to comfortably bring the DTE Ideation Days to a close.