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Tim Graduate Contest 2015: the Triumph of Innovation

, by Benedetta Ciotto
Four projects won the third Telecom Italia Contest, organized for the class of Technology and Innovation Strategy. As a reward, the possibility to present the business plan to the Tim incubator

Four of the nineteen projects on innovation technology presented for the third Tim Graduate Contest have won a day at the Tim incubator at the beginning of the next year. The challenge, carried out in the context of the Technology and Innovation Strategy course (under the Bachelor's degree on in Economics and Management of Innovation and Technology), will contribute to 40% of each student's final grade. The ceremony proclaiming the two winners and the two runners up for the two categories proposed, big data and rebranding data, was held on 2 December in the presence of Gianmario Verona (Tim Chair in Market Innovation, Bocconi University), Paola Zanella and Luca Pistilli (PhD students, Bocconi University), Ida Sirolli, Pierfrancesco Pierangelini and Emanuele Ranieri (Telecom Italia). "The contest is thought as a simulation of what students will essentially be doing in a company after their studies. It's a project completing the theory learned in class with a practical experience employing the so called soft skills", explains Verona.

After having developed a business plan on a project linked to big data or rebranding data, 19 groups presented their project during a 5-minutes pitch. "Our project's goal is not just the monetization of big data, but the creation of something which can be of social utility, such as fighting tax evasion", explains Bianca Pontiggia, member of the winning group for the category of big data. This business model, named ScontRINi, is aimed, on one side at incentivizing consumers to snap receipts in return for discounts and personalized offers, on the other, at incentivizing shops to give receipts in return for more visibility. All this would result in the decrease of tax evasion also because government could deduce, thanks to the information provided by the app, if similar shops in the same area dispense a too small amount of receipts. The winning group for the rebranding data category proposed a tv on demand platform connecting users according to their timetables: "For example the user can write a comment at the 15th minute of a movie, so that friends in his network can view this comment at the right minute, whenever they watch the movie. We thought to develop this project as we know that these days it is more and more difficult to meet each other and watch a film all together", says Luigi Paolo Benito Leone, a member of the team.

"I listened to many new and fresh ideas. Students had the opportunity to learn how to work in a team and how to deliver a short and effective presentation, and I must admit that they all managed to do that", refers Ida Sirolli, Head of Research & Education and People Value at Telecom Italia. "The goal of this contest is to allow students to express their innovation skills and to work on concrete and current challenges for a company", she concludes.

The winning and the runner-up projects for each category:
Big Data:

  1. ScontRINi by Francesca Badaracco, Pietro Marangi, Carlo Pautrie, Bianca Pontiggia, Alberto Ticchi
  2. RouTIM by Giulio Digiacomo, Claudio Ferrantino, Monica Ornati, Leonardo Palombo, Myrsini Vlachou

Honorable Mention: Stores! by Riccardo Aghito, Andrea Angeli, Federico Capitani, Giovanni Scalco, Matteo Vizza
Rebranding Data:

  1. TimVision by Luigi Paolo Benito Leone, Jovana Djelic, Monika Dimitrova, Payam Amir Sheibani, Oliver Suto
  2. TimNext by Silvia Cover, Fule Jin, Livia Zhang, Maria Piera Bignami, Filippo Maria Mungo

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