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During the EADA’s Innovation Challenge 2021, celebrated from the 10th to the 12th February, International Master in Management participants had the chance to put into practice the main three principles of disruptive innovation: making the impossible possible, the exclusive inclusive, and accessible the inaccessible. The challenge, which was co-led by EADA’s Dean Jordi Díaz and the Director of the Master in Management, James Haigh, was a 3-day competition where participants worked in teams to produce disruptive innovation business ideas. All of them were supported by 4 innovators, some of them EADA Alumni:

• Inês Maria Marques (Master in Management, 2015): Startup & Partner Manager at Microsoft For Startups. She helps companies in their digital transformation by connecting them with partners and access to technology. Her advice was: “Try to define your business model in one sentence. Prepare your pitch well and explain your project in 5 minutes.”
• Sven Huber: Founder and CEO at de Fiction Express, an award-winning literacy resource designed to improve poor reading habits through the power of engagement. His advice was: “Don’t start a business to get rich. If you really make a difference in life, success and money will follow.”
• Brian Guidry, Partner at Pixelz Inc., which helps to lead online retailers to use AI to retouch product images for e-commerce. His advice was: “Try to solve any social problem and be passionate about it.”
• Makandi Laiboni (International MBA, 2020): Kenya Innovators Associate at One Acre Fund, supplying smallholder farmers in Africa with the financing and training they need to grow more food and earn more money. Her advice was: “Be curious and don’t stop asking questions to identify opportunities to change the world.”

Besides, they were supported by 3 EADA Alumni who acted as mentors and helped them in building their projects and preparing the final pitch:

• Chiara Chianese (International MBA, 2009): Founder of FertiLite, a chatbot that helps patients feel better during the fertility journey. For instance, this gives some tips to deal with uncomfortable real-life situations.
• Mike Reiffers (Master in Management, 2014): CEO & Co-founder of Skeeled, a complete Talent Acquisition software to attract and hire top talent.
• Janek Andre (Master in Marketing, 2010): CEO & Co-founder at Gindumac, a leading used industrial machinery trading market. This company sells and buys used machinery out of metalworking and plastics processing industries.

EADA Innovation Challenge 2021:   A real-life experience

According to Jordi Díaz, “this is a journey where, in three days, they rediscover what disruptive innovation is, they get inspired by innovators and mentors and also they compete in semifinals and finals to prove and show that they have discovered a problem and they have a solution for this major problem.”

To James Haigh, this is a unique experience in different ways: “First of all, we are talking about a ‘less academic’ experience within an academic context, so it connects with our ‘learning by doing’ methodology. So, we are talking about three intense days, like a real bootcamp, which is applied to an actual business reality. So, working under pressure for such a short amount of time and having to produce so much in teams take them out of their comfort zone and make them grow.”

In the same way, Haigh adds: “This challenge complements very well our classes from the rest of the year, which are very practical, but they have a tight academic framework. And also it complements our leadership development programme that we do in the Collbató Residential Training Center, because it brings together leadership, teamwork, and all these aspects of soft skills and hard business skills, as well as the disruptive innovation mindset.”

Díaz also highlights the impact of this experience on participants’ employability: “The EADA’s Innovation Challenge is going to help our participants –people around 25 years of age on average– to bring value from day 1. It is not about going and listening, but it is about discovery, seeing what is there and making proposals. So, we clearly think that this is a good experience that, whenever they are facing a job interview or process, will put them in a better position to succeed.”

EADA Innovation Challenge 2021:   This year’s winners

The winning project was Easy Care, a device that solves an important problem in rural areas in India, which is menstrual hygiene management. For instance, menstrual taboos in India forces girls to drop out of school. In addition, there are high rates of cervical cancer due to the infections caused by sanitary hygiene. This team’s solution was a low-cost vending machine that sells sanitary cloth pads with an incorporated bin.

In this year’s competition, we had two ‘ex-aequo’ 2nd positions. One was Phoenix, a social job platform that increases the inclusiveness of homeless by empowering them within society. In this case, the goal was to give them the opportunity to get a stable income through technology and partnerships with municipalities, companies and banks. The other was House of Talents, a social training platform addressed to orphans in South-America. The team offered blended training solutions focused on the professional skills needed to find a job and leave the orphanages.