Which focus would you like to take? From providing a thematic challenge which focuses on a specific field you are active in to open ideation or business model generation for specific ideas – which focus to take in your challenge will depend on the business problem you are facing and the input from academic staff.

In general, we differentiate between short-term challenges, which usually span one to three days, and long-term challenges, which span several weeks to months. While short-term challenges require far less upfront investment in terms of time and personnel, long-term challenges give students more time to internalise your business problem and to dive deeper into the subject matter at hand. As a result, these solutions usually exhibit a higher degree of detail and sophistication.

You will need to decide on the number of universities you’d like to partner and collaborate with as this influences the challenge process and outcome. Developing a challenge together with several universities brings the benefit of receiving a multitude of solutions to your problem and means less intensive supervision of a larger number of students. Partnering with only one university, for instance the local university in your region, will enable you to engage in more in-depth collaboration and supervision of a smaller number of students.

Which kind of collaboration suits your company? While it is recommended to use traditional face-to-face collaboration, virtual or hybrid collaboration provides for a convenient and flexible option if you’d like to offer an international challenge. Here, you will need to find the right proportion of face-to-face and virtual activities. In the case of fully virtual collaboration, you need to ensure a good level of connectivity and communication with academic staff and students.

Depending on the focus of your challenge, you have to decide on whether your challenge will be open to undergraduate or postgraduate students, or both. This will depend on the experience level you deem necessary to work on the challenge you provide.

The challenge-based learning approach values participation of mixed student teams which are made up of students from different disciplines, universities and countries. Where possible, configure a diverse student team as this enriches team creativity and in effect, the quality of solutions delivered.

There are several actors who have specialised in connecting companies interested providing business challenges with suitable universities. Browse our emerging database of sustainable venturing challenge platforms and matchmakers to see whether there’s a suitable university partner for your individual needs.

Stay abreast of the latest news from the university ecosystem, subscribe to receive regular press information from specific innovation-oriented universities or browse media platforms specialised in higher education to learn of universities interested in collaborating with business partners.

Does the university’s innovation orientation fit your innovation endeavour and the challenge format you envision to implement?

Is the university aiming to generate impact through the collaboration? Together with you, is the academic staff willing to develop and set clear impact objectives?

What is the company’s strategy and level of engagement regarding environmental and social sustainability? Does it suit the intent of co-developing sustainable ideas and solutions?

Do you both dispose of the necessary resources to ensure a fruitful collaboration, for instance with regards to time and personnel?

Is the university willing to share all necessary information, know-how and data to ensure that the challenge is designed and implemented in an effective way?

What drives you both to co-design and co-implement the sustainable venturing challenge? Collaboration in venturing challenges requires upfront commitment and the willingness to interact with an outside actor who brings in different values and working approaches. Does the university’s level of commitment and intent fit with your yours?

Make sure to clarify expectations early on in the partnership process. Managing and aligning expectations is important for ensuring a good collaboration. This includes defining the role you will take on as business partner, but also clarifying the roles of academic staff and students in the challenge process. It is also important to discuss how much time and resources each of you will invest in preparing and implementing the challenge activity or programme. It is also recommended to discuss the intended learning objectives for students. The most important things you decide on should be documented in project plans and be set forth in a formal agreement. Also check in advance whether you wish to set up a non-disclosure agreement and prepare this with the university’s legal services, if necessary. Also discuss who receives what rights to the results produced.

Discuss how to frame and communicate the business problem to the students. It is important that the challenge is neither formulated too broadly nor too narrowly. It should be open enough to foster students’ creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, but concrete enough to provide them with a sufficient degree of clarity and to not overwhelm them. It can be helpful to ask the following question: “What can be done to create a solution to the problem?” This question leads to a challenge and contains a lot of learning possibilities for the students. Asking how to solve a problem goes in the wrong direction (at least in terms of following the challenge-based learning approach), as it suggests that the solution is already known and the students are only to carry out operative implementation.

VUCA is an acronym that stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and is used to describe the nature of challenges. Both sides should be aware of this and discuss how to handle it.

Based on the duration and type of collaboration, determine which collaboration and meeting spaces you will need. Also consider whether you would like to provide your company facilities as a learning location for the students. If you engage in virtual collaboration, you will also have to give thought to the design of the virtual collaboration spaces.

Discuss with the academic staff whether and in what way training to prepare for your role as coach and mentor to the students will be necessary.

You should reflect on the “after-phase” of the challenge. In the case that you decide to work with the developed student ideas and solutions, how will you go about implementing and measuring the impact of the implemented solutions? How will you involve the students in this process?

How do you plan on assessing the students’ ideas and solutions and which evaluation criteria will you use? Together with the educators, you should decide on whether you will grade the final ideas and whether your company will issue official certification for the students’ achievements.