Jan Philipp Albrecht ist Schirmherr der Digital Challenge

Jan Philipp Albrecht is patron of the Digital Challenge

The Bay Areas e.V. and the Mittelstand 4.0 Competence Center Kiel announce the fourth Digital Challenge. Digitalization Minister Jan Philipp Albrecht is the patron of the Digital Challenge 2020: "Best opportunity to make your business model sustainably digital and thus fit for the future".

We are looking for disruptive and sustainable digital business models from students from the true north. With our event partner Mittelstand 4.0 Competence Center KielToday, together with the state government, we launched the fourth nationwide Digital Challenge.

"In Schleswig-Holstein, we are surfing the wave of digitalization instead of letting it roll over us. We see change as something positive and see great opportunities in digitalization. That's why we have awarded the Digital Challenge with the Digitization Prize."

- Jan Philipp Albrecht, Minister for Digitization

Companies from Schleswig-Holstein are invited to have their business model turned on its head by students within a week, starting at the end of November. The students' task is to develop a concept or a detailed description of an innovative business model that questions the participating companies' current business model and provides impetus for the future. The students are supported by a board of experts. Finally, the new business models are awarded prizes based on their degree of innovation, the economic and social potential of the idea and the performance of the students.

For Jan Philipp AlbrechtMinister for Energy Transition, Agriculture, Environment, Nature and Digitalization, the Digital Challenge is a further sign of the great willingness in the state not only to embrace digital change, but to actively shape it and make positive use of the opportunities it brings. "In Schleswig-Holstein, we are surfing the wave of digitalization instead of letting it roll over us. We see change as something positive and see great opportunities in digitalization. That's why we have awarded the Digital Challenge with the Digitization Prize," says Albrecht.

"The theme of this year's Digital Challenge is "Sustainable Disruption". With this theme, we want the Challenge participants to put traditional business models to the test in terms of their durability in the digitalized and sustainable world, taking a holistic view of people, the environment and the economy," says Frank Bösenkötter, CEO of The Bay Areas. With this innovative and compact program, the project achieves intensive networking between students and commercial companies in a very short space of time. "Disruptive ideas are transformed into practical concepts and competitive business models - for a sustainable working world of tomorrow," says Bösenkötter. "We are delighted to receive the special prize of the digitization award "Best of Digitales.SH" 2020 from the state government for a format that develops lasting ideas for education, business and science in Schleswig-Holstein."

Prof. Dr. Carsten Schultz, Professor of Technology Management at the Institute for Innovation Research at Kiel University, is supporting the project on behalf of the Mittelstand 4.0 Competence Center Kiel, which helps companies to increase their innovative capacity and successfully shape the digital transformation: "The experiences of the three Digital Challenges so far show that the companies and students benefit equally from the close cooperation and that innovative ideas have already found their way into implementation. Digital innovations in particular cannot be driven forward by companies alone. The Digital Challenge provides companies with new impetus and ideas, as well as access to the specialists they need to implement them."

The scientific management and integration of the Digital Challenge into teaching is carried out jointly by the universities of applied sciences in Flensburg, Heide and Kiel and the universities in Kiel and Lübeck. "The Digital Challenge is an example of knowledge and technology transfer in action and now involves students and professors from five universities," says Gerrit Müller-Rüster, lecturer in the Green Energy course at the West Coast University of Applied Sciences. A total of 10 student teams will once again show maximum commitment to the future of companies and reflect their knowledge from their studies on the real needs of practice.

For student Annabelle Lindemann, it is clear that the Challenge is highly recommended. Through her own experiences in the Challenge, she has learned directly how important it is to first become a team in order to be able to develop good innovation concepts. It is not enough to have an idea. You have to work together as a team to develop it into a disruptive, feasible and, above all, promising idea. Student Dan-Erik Laars also used the Digital Challenge to strategically realign his studies.

For Riccardo Rieder from the DESIGNA Verkehrsleittechnik GmbH, which took part as a company in 2019, the Digital Challenge is a project that companies should take advantage of. The challenge allows companies to question themselves: Are we on the right track? Is the company still on the right track? Companies can use the Digital Challenge to take an active and critical look at their own future viability. Rieder recommends every company to take part.

Digitalization and sustainability go hand in hand in the Digital Challenge. Companies interested in participating can contact the coordinators Jannis Grube from now until October 15 at the latest: you@the-bay-areas.de and Sophia Ackerhans: ackerhans@bwl.uni-kiel.de turn.