Challenge for Israeli students to develop and present a winning idea
December 22, 2017 by J-Wire Newsdesk
Read on for article
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Bengis Centre for Entrepreneurship & Innovation in the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management has launched its new Challenge platform this week, featuring a collaboration with Mercedes-Benz to find the “Next 100 Million” as the challenge.
Eyal Mayer and Yossi Shavit
Defining just what constitutes the “100 million” is part of the challenge. All Israeli students from every field are invited to develop ideas over the next month.
The Challenge innovation platform connects the competitors to real-world opportunities, and offers global organisations a way to present their current challenges and gain access to the new and innovative thinking of students from a variety of fields and backgrounds.
The platform gives students practical experience tackling real-world challenges, which they can transform into important knowledge, tools and experience for the future.
Mercedes-Benz is challenging students to envision the “Next 100 Million.” Is it about digitisation? Driving experience? Number of customers? Hours of charging? Number of hours driven by an autonomous car?
Bengis Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation Director Yossi Shavit says, “In a data-driven world, it is hard to imagine that one person or a single research facility has all the solutions to the challenges a global organization faces. Sometimes, the solution may originate with the customer, other times from management, but more often than not, a fresh perspective is required. That is the Challenge Competition’s guiding principle.”
“The Bengis Center’s mission is to create tools to teach entrepreneurship and connect students to cutting-edge innovation and original thinking. The Challenge platform joins our many projects and events designed to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship among students and faculty of Ben-Gurion University, as well as the wider public,” explains Bengis Center Chairman, Prof. Oded Lowengart.
“Mercedes-Benz recently inaugurated its R&D Center in Israel and Ben-Gurion University is proud to be one of the first to collaborate,” he added.
Eyal Mayer, Head of Innovation at Mercedes-Benz R&D Tel Aviv, pointed out that the Challenge seeks to uncover new and groundbreaking ideas, thus strengthening the bond between the brand and its customers. “We will consider integrating these ideas into our future technologies and business models,” he said. Mayer added that the collaboration with BGU is part of the global corporation’s strategy of creating an ecosystem of innovative and creative concepts that could become part of future products and technologies.
Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz runs 25 R&D centres across the globe, which work together synergistically to provide new products, services, technologies and ideas with the potential to change the future of the automotive industry and people’s driving habits. The R&D Center recently opened in Israel is the newest addition to Daimler’s worldwide R&D network, which has main centers in Germany, California, India and China that employ 16,000 people.
