Key takeaway messages from our Innovation Talk with the Startup Academy

On 4 May 2023, CESAER together with the Startup Academy organised an Innovation Talk. This was an online event aimed at giving students from our Members an overview of the innovation landscape, to be combined with the scientific knowledge acquired during their studies. We are now sharing some key takeaways for students who could not attend the talk.

Throughout the talk, key questions emerged, on which we invite students to reflect when drafting their abstract:

• Who are the intended beneficiaries of our idea?
• Why is our idea novel? Are we facilitating a process that already exists? Are we changing and questioning norms? Are we questioning and changing expectations? In other words, are we gaining in efficiency? Are we reconsidering our common societal objectives?
• Various innovative platforms have been successful in the past years. How can we be as successful as these platforms, but for different aims, for example for sustainability instead of profit? What can we learn from landscape-changing innovations and how do we differ?
• Innovation is not only about new products or ideas, it is also about how one plays with already existing building blocks. What are we using? What are we reusing? What are we adapting? What are we inventing?

Opening the Talk, our speaker highlighted key trends steering the innovation landscape: the sharing economy, encouraging customers to not possess goods and services but to share them; low-code and no-code development platforms, which allow creating innovation in a landscape of increasingly missing software developers; artificial intelligence, including how will any innovation interact with developments in artificial intelligence; hybridisation of media, including the (responsible and legal) use of individual data; new ways of engaging with the body, such as biometric payments.

Doblin’s 10 Types of Innovation® were then presented to students. This framework of 10 types of innovation allows business innovators to identify key innovation points within their internal operations. It provides examples of how businesses can reflect and seek performance by adapting their structure, network, processes or user experiences.

The innovation talk ended with pieces of advice to perfectly pitch an idea. It included the additional challenge of communicating a positive and engaging attitude in a video; being attentive to the language melody; focusing on why this particular idea is being submitted; balancing storytelling techniques, such as anecdotes, use of personal story, the background of the idea, with the real challenge addressed, the use of statistical and scientific evidence and works.

Concluding the Talk, Justyna Szostak, Co-Chair of CESAER’s Task Force Learning & Teaching, emphasized the importance of sustainability and the impact of ideas generated by students. She highlighted the necessity for students to consider the long-term environmental, social, and economic impact of their ideas, and to think beyond short-term goals.

We are now looking forward to seeing students from our Members adopt a sustainable and socially responsible approach to innovation.

Full details for CESAER Student Challenge 2023 are available here.