This autumn, DTU students will be turning up the volume on creativity, driving innovation at major IT giants such as IBM and KMD, amongst others. This is the focus of the new Oi-X collaboration, where students seek to create new solutions for Danish companies.
This autumn, a new collaborative partnership between DTU and Denmark’s two largest IT companies, IBM and KMD, will give 500 engineering students the chance to challenge companies in Denmark and help them create new IT solutions and business opportunities. Through innovation collaboration, the project hopes to boost Danish talent development and the companies’ growth opportunities. Ending in mid-November, the innovation process will culminate in a competition where the best innovative ideas will be awarded cash prizes and scholarships.
The students must draw on their engineering skills and invent new solutions for the companies—e.g. developing apps, transforming a patent into product development or developing a technology to streamline company production.
Significant contribution to idea generation
Eva Berneke, CEO of KMD, is looking forward to the partnership which can accelerate ideas development for the company:
“For us, the Oi-X project offers not only the opportunity to contribute to generating ideas, also but exposure of the IT sector for the benefit of the industry as well as the Danish society as a whole. As an industry, it is vital that we can attract bright, inventive minds for many years to come. A cross-functional initiative of this kind is an excellent way of showing how exciting and fun working with innovation and IT can be—an area we know can help to generate growth and exciting business opportunities in Denmark,” concludes Eva Berneke, CEO of KMD.
Digitalisation—the decisive competitive parameter
Lars E. Clausen, Country General Manager, IBM Denmark, believes that the cooperation can benefit the IT industry, the students, and generate growth in Denmark.
"A cross-functional initiative of this kind is an excellent way of showing how exciting and fun working with innovation and IT can be."
Eva Berneke, CEO of KMD.
“Denmark has fallen from first to fifteenth place when it comes to countries that generate growth through IT. That is simply unacceptable! Denmark needs a leg-up and digitisation will be the crucial parameter. We need bright, young minds to take digitisation to the next level. Companies must therefore collaborate with the universities and give the students the opportunity to test their innovation skills on our most ground-breaking IT platforms such as our supercomputer Watson. We look forward to Oi-X days at DTU and to working closely with the students. I’m sure that we will gain some good contacts, new inspiration, and a range of different solutions to take home,” says Lars E. Clausen, Country General Manager, IBM Denmark.
Students will gain valuable innovation experience
The Oi-X-challenges form part of the students’ engineering programmes at DTU and the best ideas will be awarded. The most promising solutions may go on to be selected for a subsequent acceleration process, possibly resulting in business start-ups.
“This form of collaboration plays to DTU’s strengths as it involves working in a targeted way with innovation and entrepreneurship, and we are seizing every possible opportunity to integrate these popular areas into our engineering programmes. In addition to valuable hands-on experience with innovation, the project offers our students a fantastic profiling platform in relation to the companies, which may turn out to be their future partner—or employer,” says Marianne Thellersen, Senior Vice President–Innovation and Entrepreneurship at DTU.
In future, Oi-X will take place twice yearly, and the aim is for several companies from various industries to participate. Along with IBM and KMD, Oticon, Widex, and Easy Translate are already on board as innovation partners at this year’s Oi-X.
- Oi-X (Open innovation X) is a innovation partnership between businesses and higher education institutions.
- Oi-X will be launched on 14 September 2015 at DTU for students at DTU Compute, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. Oi-X is also open to other students at DTU and students at other Danish universities.
- Oi-X 2015 is jointly developed by DTU, IBM and KMD.
- While Oi-X is firmly anchored in DTU Skylab—DTU’s hub for student innovation—it is open to all higher education students.
- In future, Oi-X will take place twice a year and the aim is for the collaboration to be expanded to include up to 50 businesses and 1,000 students from several educational institutions.
- Oi-X, which forms part of the students’ study programmes, may award ECTS points.
- Oi-X is organized as a competition, with the best innovative ideas being named and awarded attractive cash prizes. In autumn 2015, the total prize money is DKK 50,000. Selected students can obtain scholarships. Grants and scholarships are sponsored by the participating companies.
- Oi-X 2015 has received sponsorship funding from KMD, IBM, Widex, Oticon, and Easy Translate.
- Through sponsorships, advice, and other services, companies can help the students to further develop the solutions with the companies or to establish start-ups.
- Open innovation is a new trend where companies invite the outside world to collaborate on developing their products and solutions. Open innovation is fully in line with other trends such as sharing economy, crowd funding, and open source, where resources are jointly pooled in order to achieve a specific goal.
Read more at www.OI-x.dtu.dk/