Sustainable venturing challenges come in different formats – from competitions and creathons to ideation workshops and full-semester courses. At their core, they provide a great opportunity for students from all study levels to work collaboratively and develop sustainable solutions to real-world problems with support from corporate and academic mentors. As a participating student, you benefit from this experience in many different ways:

Taking part in a sustainable venturing challenge enables you to experience new ways of learning at university. Going beyond traditional learning formats, you get to directly interact with and learn from professionals who are at the forefront of innovation and sustainable business development in their companies and who would like to work with you at eye-level to develop your solutions to their corporate challenges. In this way, you get to learn about how to integrate innovative, sustainable ideas into existing business models or transform ideas into viable sustainable ventures, whilst also receiving the opportunity to immediately apply your new learnings into practice.

Besides valuable learnings about how to develop and implement eco-innovations and start a new green business, you also get to expand important competencies needed for 21st century learning such as collaborative working, communication, and critical as well as creative thinking. These are crucial skills to build along your student journey and can help you further succeed in your studies, boost your career readiness and help you achieve your professional goals.

Throughout the challenge process, you get to meet and interact with people from all over the world. Working in multidisciplinary and international teams will help you cultivate an open mindset, build your intercultural skills and allow you to exchange different perspectives and ideas with other students as well as academic and company staff – all indispensable in today’s global and interconnected world.

By connecting with leading companies and working in direct exchange with company staff, you receive exposure to entrepreneurial careers and role models at an early stage in your studies. This can help you expand your professional network and increases your chances of gaining further practical experience in the future, such as internships, master thesis projects, or even employability when it comes to starting your career.

By partnering directly with companies and leading professionals to work on their existing challenges, you learn how to design and develop solutions such as new services, products and processes that have the potential to contribute to sustainable change on a local to global scale. In this way, you can make a real impact in the world as a university student. Highly innovative student teams receive the opportunity to further develop and implement their solutions, with the founding of start-ups and spin-offs being a possibility.

While companies and higher education institutions have different missions, structures and working cultures, there is great potential to generate mutual benefits through effective collaboration. Especially challenge-based learning offers an innovative approach to go about developing and implementing your university partnership and can bring many benefits for your company:

Turn a business problem you’ve identified into an opportunity by working together with university students excited to bring new ideas to your company. As a challenge provider, connecting to international students from a wide range of disciplines will allow you to receive different perspectives and fresh insights on sustainable business development. The knowledge and skillset that students and faculty provide can significantly help your company champion eco-innovation and advance sustainable business development. As a start-up, the cooperation can boost your incubation, acceleration and growth processes. In general, collaborating with students can help you employ more critical perspectives and might even inspire more creativity in your day-to-day work.

Collaborating with higher education institutions in challenge-based learning formats can form a strategic component of your sustainable innovation processes – especially when forging long-term partnerships. You benefit from receiving continuous access to the latest scientific advances and absorbing new knowledge and academic researchers’ leading expertise. Tapping into this wealth of knowledge and academic foresight also presents an advantage in that it helps you keep abreast of the larger-scale developments that will impact your sector specifically and the economy as a whole. In essence, you enter a two-way partnership in which both sides reap the benefits: while academics seek your business input to help solve real world problems and advance their research, you get the opportunity to increase your sustainable business success through accessing leading innovation and research and developing your internal capabilities and resources. Besides, you get to grow your network of trusted partners with whom you might discover and develop new formats and channels to drive science-industry collaboration.

By the time the challenge-based activity reaches its end, you are left with an array of new sustainable solutions to your business problem. Where used, these solutions hold the potential to rethink and transform your approach to sustainability and increase the positive impact your business activities generate for the environment and society. This can help you further maximise your impact, strengthen your reputation and build more trust among your customers. Other companies might be inspired to follow suit, encouraging more impact through collaboration between the higher education and business communities.

University collaboration can enhance company leader and employee development. As a company representative, working with students and academic staff can help you improve existing competencies and skills such as cooperation and communication with external actors. It can also stimulate you in terms of developing new knowledge and perspectives on sustainable venturing, and even reinvigorate your passion for innovation. The collaboration not only benefits employees directly involved in the challenge: a company-wide showcase of the results of your collaboration can provide other employees the opportunity to learn from the insights and ideas generated. This can serve as a source of inspiration for their own work and respective business field which in turn benefits the company’s learning culture and overall organisational development.

Higher education institutions are an important source of future employees. Working as challenge provider is a good way to build your employer brand and improve your visibility among the next generation of business leaders and sustainability innovators. You can get in touch with students directly who, after their studies, will potentially bring a wealth of new knowledge and skills into your company as new employees. Going beyond acquiring talent for graduate employment, developing and taking part in sustainable venturing challenges can also help you gain talent for internship placements, thesis projects and part-time student employment.

The project is realized by the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (https://uol.de/impressum/).

As required by German law, the disclaimer below provides all necessary information regarding legal matters.  For a German version, please scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Content-related responsibility as per § 55 Abs. 2 RStV:

Adj. Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter

Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law
Innovation Management and Sustainability
Ammerländer Heerstr. 114-118
26129 Oldenburg, Germany
Tel: +49 441 | 798 4762
klaus.fichter@uni-oldenburg.de

Limitation of liability for internal content

The content of our website has been compiled with meticulous care and to the best of our knowledge. However, we cannot assume any liability for the up-to-dateness, completeness or accuracy of any of the pages.

Pursuant to section 7, para. 1 of the TMG (Telemediengesetz – Tele Media Act by German law), we as service providers are liable for our own content on these pages in accordance with general laws. However, pursuant to sections 8 to 10 of the TMG, we as service providers are not under obligation to monitor external information provided or stored on our website. Once we have become aware of a specific infringement of the law, we will immediately remove the content in question. Any liability concerning this matter can only be assumed from the point in time at which the infringement becomes known to us.

Limitation of liability for external links

Our website contains links to the websites of third parties („external links“). As the content of these websites is not under our control, we cannot assume any liability for such external content. In all cases, the provider of information of the linked websites is liable for the content and accuracy of the information provided. At the point in time when the links were placed, no infringements of the law were recognisable to us. As soon as an infringement of the law becomes known to us, we will immediately remove the link in question.

Copyright

The content and works published on this website are governed by the copyright laws of Germany. Any duplication, processing, distribution or any form of utilisation beyond the scope of copyright law shall require the prior written consent of the author or authors in question.

Data protection

A visit to our website can result in the storage on our server of information about the access (date, time, page accessed). This does not represent any analysis of personal data (e.g., name, address or e-mail address). If personal data are collected, this only occurs – to the extent possible – with the prior consent of the user of the website. Any forwarding of the data to third parties without the express consent of the user shall not take place.

We would like to expressly point out that the transmission of data via the Internet (e.g., by e-mail) can offer security vulnerabilities. It is therefore impossible to safeguard the data completely against access by third parties. We cannot assume any liability for damages arising as a result of such security vulnerabilities.

The use by third parties of all published contact details for the purpose of advertising is expressly excluded. We reserve the right to take legal steps in the case of the unsolicited sending of advertising information; e.g., by means of spam mail.

Source: Rose & Partner Rechtsanwälte, Mustervorlage.net