The Best Student Ideas in the Hunt for a Million Dollar Prize

In the national final of the prestigious student competition, a team convinced that waste collection can also help life in overcrowded areas emerged victorious. They are expected to face a battle for the acceptance of this idea at the regional competition.

Innovative approaches to design, digitalization, repurposing abandoned buildings, new tourist products, pellets from plant waste, and taxes to assist the most vulnerable are just some of the ideas that students would like to use to address the important global challenge of ‘Life in Overcrowded Areas’. This is part of the projects that student teams from Vern’ presented to a panel of experts as part of the national final of the global student competition ‘Hult Prize 2016’. This year’s competition, which includes students from the world’s top universities, focuses on the theme ‘Crowded Urban Spaces’, with the task of devising social entrepreneurial ideas and projects that will contribute to the sustainable economic inclusion of residents in overcrowded areas. Ten student teams participated in the final, presenting their projects to the expert jury, and the winner was declared to be Vern’s student team New Horizons, whose members Ivana Trušček Prenkpalaj, Dora Domaćinović, Filip Trezner, and Filip Mikić proposed a project based on waste collection and processing, product design in collaboration with the world’s leading authorities, emphasizing local authenticity, and the production and sale of newly created items online and in local stores. By winning the national final, the members of the New Horizons team earned a trip to the regional final of the Hult Prize 2016 of their choice – to London, San Francisco, Boston, Dubai, or Shanghai – where they will compete with teams from around the world for the grand prize of one million dollars to realize their project.

Brilliant Initiative

Mr. sc. Gordana Ćorić, deputy head of the undergraduate program in Entrepreneurship Economics and lecturer in the Dynamic Entrepreneurship course, told us how the initiative to involve Vern’ in this prestigious competition was launched. In the spring of 2013, she says, the professor who also mentored students during the development of their ideas, an elective course on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovations (SPDI) was launched at Vern’ in the Entrepreneurship Economics program. As preparation for this, they gathered information about various competitions, summer schools, and internships on the topic of social entrepreneurship.

– Our former student Tena Pick, who graduated from Hult International in London in social entrepreneurship, was a valuable source of information for us and helped us a lot with her experience in parts of the program related to measuring the impact of social entrepreneurial projects. Her enthusiasm for the global Hult Prize program and impressions from the Clinton Global Initiative in 2013 and 2014 convinced us that this is a brilliant initiative in which our students could learn a lot by participating. In the first year, I only approached students from the SPDI course and engaged our creative student Marina Petrović and helped her build a team – explains Ćorić.

Prophets of Doom

In the first year, their team did not advance to the regional final, but by the second year, the idea of the team that included Marina Petrović, Klara Glavač, and Iva Focht made it to the regional final. They responded to the challenge related to preschool education in urban slums. In their work and research, Glavač tells us, they concluded that the problem is not in human capacities, knowledge, and experience, but in the infrastructure on the ground and connecting people around the world.

– Thus, we designed DOMe, a unit that is almost a self-sufficient dwelling made 60 percent from recycled materials, equipped with everything necessary and didactic novelties for children, and can also serve as a shelter, gathering place, classroom, clinic, etc. An additional step was to include waste collectors from the slums who would sell us the materials directly from which parts of our DOMe were built. The second part of the project was a portal aimed at connecting volunteers, NGOs, government organizations, etc.; it would require an annual membership fee, and in return, all information about programs, funding, projects, and crisis hotspots could be found there, as well as the option to buy or rent DOMe. Of course, there was also a detailed financial structure for the first five years of operation. When the migrant crisis began, we were sorry that we almost turned out to be ‘prophets of doom’, but it turned out that our product could be very much needed – says Glavač.

When it comes to Dubai, she says it was an incredibly inspiring and challenging experience that paid off in many ways:

– Ambitious mentors and strict judges encourage you to work even harder on what you have envisioned. There is no false flattery for students, and if they like your idea, immediately after the ‘pitch’, everyone approaches you: from students who want to talk and collaborate with you to investors and judges – says Glavač, who has since received an invitation and the position of director of the Hult Prize competition in Croatia, which means she was responsible for organizing the quarter-finals, which had not yet been held in that form. She also received a scholarship for a master’s degree at Hult in Boston.

More than a Competition

The positive experience from the Dubai competition of the team in which Glavač was increased interest in it, so Vern’ had as many as ten teams this year wanting to compete. Thus, it entered the circle of faculties that are directly involved in the competition, and as a reward, the winning team participates directly in the regional final. Glavač would suggest to this year’s winners not to take the project lightly but to develop their idea from the start as a real startup.

– Judges can discern who truly wants to work on what they have conceived and who has done it just for the competition. This also involves a lot of dedicated work and research and the development of skills and knowledge that you may not yet have, but I believe that it pays off many times over – advises Glavač.

Students can test the knowledge and skills acquired at university in various competitions, build competencies, credibility, and test their ability to navigate new conditions that are closest to what awaits them in the job market. In addition, says Professor Ćorić, the students she collaborated with while participating in such competitions continued to be active in job searching, devising their own ventures, discovering new areas of education and action, and developing their careers.