Summer Academy. 

In the Entre curriculum, we have a Learning Journey and in the earlier Journey, we went to Ekokylä this time our journey was more traditional. We stayed in Tampere with a Swiss master’s program from Innokick Switzerland for a Summer academy. Summer Academy is an Innokick course and they have multiple contractors whom the students will do innovation for. The students are divided into groups and each group has their task sometimes they can have the same task and compete against each other or then they have multiple contractors with whom few teams compete. Each team in the end of the week presents their innovations in a pitch and the best pitch wins.

The challenge.

For our Summer academy the contractors were Uponor, Tampereen sähkölaitos and Tampere Tribe. We were divided into groups and my group Got the challenge from Tampereen sähkölaitos (TS. for short). Their challenge was how they keep their customers happy and using their service. The challenge was a bit confusing because TS. Already have nearly a monopoly in Tampere only competition they have is groundheating. So basically the task was just how to keep the customers happy with the heating they have.

Our team. 

Our team was formed by mainly HES-SO Innokick students. We decided not to choose a leader and shared some roles. In the start everybody was part of the innovation. After we got some sense what we are going to do people started to do their roles. The Innokick students designed the product and did a report for their school and me and my Finnish fellow did our pitch preparation meaning the presentation and the script.

Our solution.

As we started to study one thing quickly became apparent as many students from Tampere are themselves customers of ts was that the people individually can´t affect that much to the heating cost they get as the apartment companies get one big bill that they then divide with the people living in the apartment building. As one of the biggest influencers to customer happiness is price and with heat especially this is important so we thought how could we unite the residents of the apartment company to lower the cost of the heating together and at the same time attack a bigger mission, lowering the emissions from heating.

After ideating for a few hours we came up with an idea that all the people on the same apartment complex could follow the optimal temperature based on the outside temperature with temperature meter. Since all the individuals are able to adjust the temperature of their own radiators, together they are able to bring the heating costs down and make the apartment complex more environmentally friendly. Additional thing that we had was that the residents could follow how much energy they are using and how much have they saved energy compared to the traditional way of following the temperature. But since this had to be more easily approachable we didn´t want to add any app or website things.

As we were ideating the product, we noticed that in Finland we consume a lot of heating energy this is because of our cold winters and high class of living. So what we created was a temperature meter. Based on the budget of the product you could have a normal temperature meter in your home or our idea, a lamp that changes it´s colour based on the heat in the apartment. It would be easy and aesthetical way to follow your apartment temperature. The lamp would then be placed on every apartment resident´s apartment so they could adjust their radiator always to the optimal temperature and save energy. As we came up with the product I started to plan the pitch. The presentation was done by the Innokick students and I and a Innokick students were on the stage for the pitch. I did the opening and the Innokick student did the rest. In the end we didn´t end up winning but also the other group that did the innovation for TS didn´t so a clear position wasn´t there.

Reflection 

When looking back at it I would definitely right at the start choose a leader for our team. As in someplaces the flat organization might work in my opinion our team lacked the organization and communication in order to work efficiently. Another thing is that I would like to have more openness by the teammates I worked with. It was hard to keep on track of the teams work because few of the teammates didn´t communicate with the Finnish students so we were left out and confused wich caused unnecessary conflict. In the pitch I would most definitely use more selling and storyline based pitching method. Our pitch considered way too much to “lillukan varsi” and so our pitch wasn´t that interesting for the audience. Overall although I had many places to improve I think this was very valuable experience especially when thinking about our 24h challenge.