What is it?

The Open Innovation Challenge is the embodiment of EUTOPIA's will to transform universities into actors of societal change, fostering international and regional collaboration with public and private partners. It aims to test a new approach for universities:

  • Promoting student-centred ideas;
  • Allowing them to empower themselves and to orient them toward the contemporary challenges that our partners face; 
  • Providing learning opportunities that take advantage of the plurality, potential and international vision of Europe.

How does it work?

Step One: Identification of the challenges (until March 2021)

The first step is the identification of the challenges that our local partners face. This step has already started and is running through two main options: through events organised by the EUTOPIA (WeDiscover Days BarcelonaEUTOPIA Week, Design Jam, among others). The second step is through local visits with the partners (virtual during lockdown).

Identifying a challenge means to look for problems that have a tangible impact on our regions and that have a direct effect on our life. Some of the universities, such as UPF, have chosen areas linked to the SDGs:

  1. Climate Emergency

  2. Decarbonated transport and mobility

  3. Healthy Food / Green food production and consumption

  4. Social Inclusion / Fighting Inequality

  5. Making cities and human settlements safe, resilient and sustainable

 

The idea is to identify current local problems that affect our local and global society 

and to work with teams of like-minded students to find future solutions. The aim is to develop projects from a local level to a global level.

Students will form teams to develop projects around one of the challenges and thematic areas. Once they have done this, a selection of the best projects will be made and students will present them, with the support of the Pool of Partners, during the WeDiscover Week Brussels, organised by VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).

Step Two: Open Innovation Challenge (March 2021 - June 2022)

At WeDiscover Week Brussels, a jury will evaluate the projects from all student teams and pick two challenges, that are common and relevant to all universities in the alliance, that students will focus on.

Between April and October 2021, the teams will work on these challenges and propose appropriate solutions. The selection of the projects will take place internally at each university and one team will be chosen per institution and be sent to the Hackathon.

The Hackathon will be organised by the University of Gothenburg in October 2021.

The aim is to present the state of advancement of each team's research. The teams will face-off to secure a place in the Finals, and only three out of six teams will be entitled to continue.

Each university's selected team will compete in the Hackathon and three final projects will be chosen to go onto the Finals that will take place at the University of Warwick in June 2022.

A jury made up of the EUTOPIA Pool of Partners (PoP), international experts and Eutopia staff,  will decide which project has identified the best challenge and solution, with a view of the winning team being able to develop their project beyond the pilot.