La Salle Technova Barcelona, Spain
“SDG's Challenges”
An initiative engaging 850+ first-year university students in developing entrepreneurial projects aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Using the Candy Innovation Model, students work in multidisciplinary teams, fostering social consciousness, creativity, and collaboration, with industry mentors and companies supporting the initiative.
Purpose of the solution
The main objectives and goals of this project are:
• Stimulate the spirit of entrepreneurship in first-year undergraduate students, promoting their roles as entrepreneurs and drivers of social change.
• Foster the understanding of social entrepreneurship projects, through multidisciplinary teams and the pillars of collaboration, ethics, and excellence.
• Ability to define entrepreneur basic concepts.
• Assuming the social and ethical responsibility of the profession.
• Having interest and resources for creativity and innovation.
• Ability to create a culture in the company and corporate responsibility.
The project concentrates on addressing issues or challenges linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals by leveraging innovative entrepreneurial solutions proposed by students. This initiative aims to foster social consciousness regarding global affairs and their impact on society. Many of the challenges are real and proposed by corporations or mentors. For the innovation park this is a mutual benefit between the Park and the University, since on the Park side it helps the University of La Salle URL to train students in concepts of entrepreneurship, innovation, teamwork, idea generation, and others and in return it receives in exchange new ideas, worked by teams of multidisciplinary students and some of these can enter acceleration programs to be implemented and carried out as future startups.
Impact
The teams are providing solutions to 106 challenges proposed by 7 companies and 28 mentors, it should be noted that all challenges are related to one or more SDGs. The project directly impacts 852 students of La Salle URL, who receive knowledge and skills to develop their projects that run through 4 phases that integrate the Candy Innovation Model (Challenge, Idea/solution, Prototype, and Pitch), the dynamics of the sessions is positively valued by students, mentors and companies, as it is easy to understand, allows teamwork and provide efficient solutions in a short period. Among the new collaborations we can name the 7 companies that have participated directly in this edition: Caixa d'Enginyers, Lavinia, KPMG, Black Fish, Avoris, Consorci de la Zona Franca, and Incasol.
Of the 106 projects that have worked in 21 classrooms, 21 finalists have been selected, of which the 2 best rated will have as a prize a trip to Rome for students, mentors involved, and a team of the Innovation Park, where they will have the opportunity to present their projects in the framework of the ecosystem of La Salle worldwide and assess their scalability in other partner institutions.
What is innovative about it?
This proposal is developed within the only transversal subject of La Salle University, which allows the work in multidisciplinary teams of students and professors. In the past, the course dealt only with concepts related to philosophy and now it focuses on entrepreneurship and challenges related to SDGs, in addition to incorporating companies that propose them. The way to transfer the knowledge to develop the projects is through the Candy Innovation Model methodology, which allows to have dynamic tools that incorporate design thinking and Lean Launchpad concepts, facilitating the learning and assimilation of concepts and solutions.
Who are the main users?
• 852 first-year students
• 7 companies that are part of the La Salle Corporate Board Council and their representatives who take part in some sessions
• 21 senior mentors
• 7 junior mentors (master students learning the methodology)
• 8 employees of the Innovation Park
• 5 interns
• Academic team
Who runs it?
This program is managed and developed by the team from La Salle Technova Barcelona, Innovation Park of the University of La Salle. The team of 28 mentors is also in charge of the development of the 8 sessions of the project.