Eight Bocconi Students Well Acclimatized to Year 2050
Four out of the ten teams that will take part in the Italian final of the Henkel Innovation Challenge are composed of Bocconi students. The business game offers university students from all over the world the chance to make a business experience and translate theoretical knowledge into practice. The national final will take place Thursday, 26 February at the Henkel Italia headquarters in Milan. The groups will have fifteen minutes to convince an Henkel top level management jury that their concept is both innovative and sustainable. The winning team will fly to Vienna in April to represent Italy in the three-day international final, and hopefully get one of the prizes: meet the Henkel CEO Kasper Rorsted and win around-the-world tickets worth 10,000, 4,000 and 2,000 euros.
Five months ago 36 students of the Marketing Management English class were divided into teams of two persons each and challenged to create an innovative product or a technology for an existing Henkel brand in one of its three business areas: Beauty Care; Laundry and Home Care; Adhesive Technologies. They had to develope their project according to market needs in 2050. "It wasn't an exercise in fantasy", warns Cristian Chizzoli, that has tutored his Bocconi students along with Deborah Raccagni and Laura Colm. "Teams didn't have technological restraints, but they had to elaborate their projects on an already existing trend such as population ageing, global warming, or water shortage. I appreciated the students' ability to link their projects to already existing market problems and provide data to support their ideas".
All four Bocconi teams have choosed the Adhesive Technologies area. Pietro Cupolo and Helena Vallve have named themselves The Sopranos and imagined a special adhesive able to intercept, store, convert and transfer energy – a sort of alternative source of energy for devices that are already permeating our society. "Marketing requires imagination and creativity", Cupolo says. "It was the most stimulating experience of the whole Marketing Management program". Tommaso Bressa and Iva Mladenovic (CyanoFix) have conceived a powerful medical glue that could be used in surgery as well in preventive medicine. They highlight team work: "Conciliating our talents and attitudes has been essential". As every other team, they're approaching the final guided by an Henkel mentor: "Exchanging views with a manager is priceless".
Anna Capati and Zsofia Kereszy (Binding Team) have conceived Fix'n'Roll, a spray glue for fixing stockings, a small, light and portable emergency product. "We had a first hand experience of how much important is financial knowledge when you're developing an idea. It has been necessary to be flexible, able to adapt ideas to the demands of the company, humble enough to correct assumptions refuted by consumers' research, and confident in our own idea". Anna Marsanasco and Mario Natale (4D Future) have imagined a sticker able to build the home of the future. "The compound will be combined with local and recyclable materials and used in the printing of buildings in 4D, a technology that will give the buildings the ability to repair themselves in the event of cracks or damage. Having 2050 as the reference year has pushed us to think big".
The four teams have been able to balance analytical skills with the creativity necessary when dealing with such a distant future. "We want to bring out their ability to translate innovative ideas into sustainable and successful business solutions", says Ambrogio Dossena, HR Business Partner at Henkel Italia. "They'll have the opportunity to step into the shoes of an Henkel manager and to demonstrate their leadership skills. Only those who will be able to convince our top management of the potential success of their proposal will obtain a visibility that could translate into career opportunities abroad". As Chizzoli points out, it's not uncommon to find students working for a company that had promoted a contest two or three years earlier.