In WiSe 2020/21 26 students started virtually working on their projects. In the second year we had three collaborations with industry partners.

Entrepreneurship projects

Two student teams have been formed to work on business ideas that were proposed by students:

• Swavy: The team of six from Germany, Turkey and Indonesia focus on washing machines that are among the biggest consumers of electricity in the home: a medium-sized coal-fired power plant in Germany runs just to supply all the washing machines in the country with electricity. The washing machine Sways are going to build can draw its heating power in advance, when there is no laundry in the drum at all and use the heat hours or days later during the next wash cycle. A small, Internet-enabled control computer makes it ready for the smart grid of the future.

• INNOMIND: Six students from Germany, Italy, and Ghana address an issue that is well-known in academia: how to find sufficient participants for answering research questions and obtain statistically relevant results? Since many participants are likely to expect an incentivation, the team has developed a user-friendly platform for people who need participants with specific criteria to answer their surveys for scientific research. At the same time people who are interested in contributing to modern science can earn or donate money by answering surveys.

Intrapreneurship projects

• Siemens : The largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe introduced the students to the topic of social manufacturing in an unmanned Makerspace. This topic has been getting more and more important, also due to the unprecedented situation of a global pandemic. Thus the industry partner asked: how to develop remote training and safety knowhow to handle e.g. 3D printing device?

• Verizon : The American multinational telecommunications conglomerate addressed the very real and important question how the future of work is changing due to new technologies but also because of dramatic events such as the current global pandemic: How can we turn the "threat" into an opportunity and create ideal work environments that allow for collaboration and recreation?

• IABG : The Munich-based analysis and test engineering company provides technical and scientific services for private and public customers in the main business fields of e.g. automotive, mobility & energy, aeronautics, and more. One question raised by the industry partner as a project challenge was: Which of our services are suitable to be launched as a digital online offering?

Please note that an idea contributed by one student will be developed equally by all other team members. This means that the developed idea belongs to all team members. The details are regulated in a team contract.

In WiSe 2019/20 two student teams worked on own business ideas submitted by individual students.

Entrepreneurship projects

• Rewards: The team of students from Uganda, Ukraine, Iran and Germany developed a customer centric loyalty program that promotes financial services for banks and sales for merchants through a simple and effortless digital reward collection for customers. The team Rewardy has uniquely designed a customizable B2B marketing solution to build customer loyalty. It helps businesses to emphasis on their brand recognition and customer satisfaction.

• Easy Walk: Six students from Equador, Iran, and Germany have built a donation-app that converts every recorded walk of dog-owners and their dogs into donations to animal shelters. Since compassion alone does not serve as a proper value proposition, the team, now named Pupcoin, integrated monetary rewards into their business idea concept: dog-owners walk for digital currency that can be used to buy sponsored products.

In WiSe 2019/20 three student teams started working on two challenges of companies.

Intrapreneurship projects

• Metafinanz : Starting point of this collaboration was an important question raised by our industry partner, a renowned Business & IT Consulting company based in Munich: how to realize self-organized home care as an example for a distributed data economy in health care? At the same time data protection issues needed to be addressed as well.

• Stadtwerke München : The biggest German municipal utility continuously invests in the development and integration of innovative solutions in areas such as mobility, energy-efficiency, or construction. The implementation of new smart products and services is being experienced and tested in SWM's own quarter (M-Quartier) that serves as a Smart City testing field. So one important question in this company challenge was: How can SWM create a measurable added value to the usage and experience of its own and new products and services in the daily life of the residents and external parties?