Southampton Business School and Toulouse Business School Innovation Simulation Competition 2021
On Monday 11 January 2021, Southampton Business School (SBS) kicked off its 72-hour Innovation challenge 2021, with our international partner, Toulouse Business School (TBS). Students from both schools were challenged to work in teams for an Innovation Simulation Competition to develop a new technological innovation.
The teams submitted their work on 14th January, when the entries were shortlisted and reviewed by the facilitators: Benoit Marchal (TBS), Dr Dorrie Chao and Dr David Baxter (SBS).
Speaking about the event, Dr Dorrie Chao and Dr David Baxter, said "We were so delighted to see full-circle partnership collaboration with Toulouse Business School. In these difficult times, finding new ways to deliver international experiences without the ability of travel is vital. It was our first virtual simulation, and business students had to quickly learn to use a complex robotics programming software platform. Over 130 students took part, and we were blown away by their creativity, and impressive commitment to the competition. They demonstrated their professionalism, working as a team over a short period of time to overcome various difficulties. In this challenging setting the teams produced some quality results, demonstrating their commitment and excellent teamwork. It was so tough to pick a winner!”
Rob Angell, Director of Internationalisation in the business school, said, “My most heartfelt thanks to my wonderful colleagues for their amazing efforts in bringing this to fruition”
We are very excited to announce the winners!
First Place – Aerolief, team sharing prize of £400/€400:
Oliver Rigby (CEO), Nicolás Ortiz Mendez (CFO), Chloé Bouzu (CTO), Whytney Love Ngbanda Wazolomat (Project Manager), Ruaa Al Amri (Marketing Director), Jack Charles (Software Engineer) and Anne Roussel (Hardware Engineer)
Runner Up – SkyDrone, team sharing prize of £200/€200:
Tom Azogui (CEO), Dina Abdelbaky (CFO), Aaron Bishop (CTO), Joseph Webb (Project Manager), Maïssara Derrouazin-Lemire (Marketing Director), Daniel Owen (Software Engineer) and Satriya Bumi and Michal Rusniok (Hardware Engineer)
Outstanding Performance
GourmAir: Oliver Wright (CEO), Aleksandar Filimonov (CFO), Jean-Matthieu Mengelle (CTO), Sina Gebauer (Project Manager), Nansy Sbaraglia & Karolina Votrubova (Marketing Director), Marie Espagno (Software Engineer), and Leonardo Iotti (Hardware Engineer)
Hover Hive: Elliot Cooper (CEO), Gauthier Chemin-Salvador (CFO), Nahid Ahmed (CTO), Amir Khedri (Project Manager), Agnès Canuyt (Marketing Director), Elliot Cooper / Youssef Khaldi (Software Engineer), and Randall Collard / Youssef Khaldi (Hardware Engineer)
DV Drones: Miguel Gonzalez Ceballos (CEO), Nabilah Amin Sudarto (CFO), Zahra Amrani
(CTO), Grégoire Laulhé (Project Manager), Clément Metery (Marketing Director), Louis Sivade (Software Engineer), and Pierre-Olivier Benelli (Hardware Engineer)
Speaking about the experience, Ruaa Al Amri, commented “It was very exciting to be working with a diverse, committed and hardworking group of people. This taught me so much about communication and time organisation, given that we are in different time zones with different commitments. I am really thankful for this exceptional experience and hope to be able to apply this knowledge to the real world!”
Team GourmAir added "Taking part in this Innovation Simulation virtual competition has been an EXCITING and REWARDING experience and we would like to thank Dr Dorrie Chao and Dr David Baxter for organising this. Without a doubt, this has been a challenging week, but we improved our analytical thinking, innovation skills and teamwork. The whole simulation was very professionally organised and pushed us out of our comfort zones. Some of us even became software/hardware engineers in only 3 days! Thanks to the dedication and hard work of everyone in our team we produced a professional presentation of which we are all very proud!
The best way to sum our experience is through this quote by one of our team members: ‘I just want to say that this is the group project I've enjoyed the most in my 3 years at university and that's thanks to you guys, you've been awesome."
There were so many great teams and students that performed outstandingly so, congratulations to all the participants, you all did a great job!
