The TU Darmstadt idea challenge is an event where both students and researchers present their innovative ideas in front of a broad audience. The applicants present their innovations under technical, economic and social aspects. The innovations are evaluated by a jury consisting of persons from academia, industry and politics. At the final event, the most promising innovations are awarded.
The TU Darmstadt idea challenge is set up in three stages:
STAGE 1: Application
Both students and reasearchers are asked to send in their innovative ideas. They need to describe their ideas comprehensive and clear. An expert jury evaluates the quality of the innovative ideads and decides which of the ideas will make it to the secound round.
STAGE 2: Detailled description of the innovative ideas
The applicants are asked for a more detailled description of their innovative ideas. Furthermore, additional question need to be answered by the apllicants. Again, an expert jury will deceide which innovaive idea will make it to the finals. Only 5 innovative ideas are send to the finals.
STAGE 3: Final event
For the final event, the applicants are asked to prepare a 15 minutes presentation on their innovative idea. The applicants present their idea in front an expert jury. The expert jury awards the best ideas but does not publish their decisions yet. At the same day, there is a big event with several hundret guests. All the finalists present their idea in a one minute pitch presentation Afterwards, the jury will award the best innovative ideas.
TOUCHPOINT 1: UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY
Both students and researchers from TU Darmstadt present their ideas in front of an expert jury. The jury consists of many persons from industry. So industry members get to know new ideas from TU Darmstadt and students and researchers learn about the industry's needs.
BOTTLENECK 1: BRING THE CHALLENGE TO THE STUDENTS' AND THE REASEARCHERS' ATTENTION
The challenge needs to be brought to the students' and to researchers' attention so that they know there is challenge to apply for. E-Mail notifications and posters at the university campus are a great help.
BOTTLENECK 2: MOTIVATE STUDENTS AND RESEARCHERS TO SUBMIT THEIR IDEAS
This type of challenge only works if students and researchers submit their innovative ideas. However, some students and researchers might not be sure about the maturity of their ideas and, thus, may not apply for the challenge.
This type of idea challenge is being performed for several years now. The website of 2018's challenge can be found at (in German):
https://www.highest.tu-darmstadt.de/ideenwettbewerb/tu_ideenwettbewerb_2...
SUCCESS FACTORS
- motivating students and researchers to submit innovative ideas
- motivate the industry to participate in the expert jury
- use the event for marketing purposes
BARRIERS
- many resources needed for organizing such an event
Performing an idea challenge is a very effective method to motivate students and researchers to present their ideas on the one hand and to bring the universities performance to the industry’s attention on the other hand.
- advertise the challenge in order to reach many students and researchers
- find many jury members from different areas in industry, academia, and politics
- prepare attractive prizes for the winners of the contest
- perform an idea contest without having checked the IP situation for every submitted idea
