La Piscine project: KEDGE BS students have been working on how new technologies can improve life in the health sector

Several groups of students from the Innovation, Transformation and Entrepreneurship programme have worked on a specific challenge proposed by BAYER around the theme of the "Bayer Digital Campus Challenge 2022": How can new technologies be used to improve people's lives in the health sector?

As a leader in its field for almost 150 years, the Bayer Group offers solutions to the challenges encountered by an increasing and ageing population in terms of health and well-being.

Challenges surrounding technology innovation in healthcare

In a fast-moving world and in a context of market globalisation, the ability to generate innovation is a key factor for differentiation and even survival for businesses. Their competitiveness is based, beyond the technological dimension, on the capacity of these companies to stimulate the innovation process during the creation of the offer, to understand its usage and to develop a new economic and organisational model.

There are several approaches to innovation

• The technological approach, through its advances, can bring radical changes to the market. It increases productivity and brings citizens new and better goods and services that improve their overall standard of living.
• The marketing approach mainly allows for incremental innovations by analysing consumer needs and identifying a response adapted to these needs.

These two approaches do not guarantee a high success rate in the launch of new products and services on the market. The contributions of the design approach with its methodologies allow for a breakthrough in meaning and concepts that are factors of innovation and value for users. This approach also allows for an input from the technological side at a very early stage in order to go further in the understanding of current needs and the detection of new needs. Success in the innovation process lies at the interface of these three approaches to innovation (technological, marketing and design approaches).

The students formed 4 working groups on different themes: Data Driven Farming, Good Digital Health Practice, Data Science, Automation and Process Mining.

Objectives of the challenge

This challenge has several learning objectives based on key skills:

• To understand the iterative processes of design and innovation.
• To use different methodologies (ethnographic, sociological, technological, design...) related to these processes.
• To experiment a challenge in a co-creation environment: from the empathetic understanding of needs, to the generation of ideas, to their prototyping and their valorisation in a logic of experimentation by trial and error and in a logic of doing.
• To discuss with users, develop an understanding of the public, approaches and fields of expertise.
• To initiate changes in behaviour: stimulate creativity, innovation and agility to activate entrepreneurial desires.

It also enables students to develop skills:

• Synthesise and create new business models, considering the context.
• Produce new ideas.
• Produce professional written documents: Context, Idea, prototype, BM, personae, etc.
• Pitch in front of professionals.
• Manage a project and a group.

The final objective of this course is to bring students to cooperate, to innovate and design new products  that create value.

Results of the challenge

The jury commended the students' work for its expertise and professionalism in the short time available for the challenges.

Composition of the Jury

• Manon Van Zuylen, International Partnership Manager at AGORIZE (French technology company specialising in the organisation of open innovation challenges and hackathons).
• Fabrice Jean-Jean, Director of KOMECO PACA. (training, auditing, consulting and strategy firm in environmental and social communication that supports start-ups and companies on CSR issues).
• Philipp Bourg, Consultant and Business Development Europe at Mold-Master.
• Claude Spano, Director of Innovation and Corporate Relations, KEDGE.
• Evelyne Lombardo, Teacher-researcher in educational innovation and immersion, KEDGE.

Prizes awarded by the jury

• Innovation and Best Idea Award to the 3WWWSOLVING Group: Chloé Dirand, Chloé Capdeville, Emilia Moussu
• Best Model/Best Prototype Award to the KALANK Group: Hortense Zadra, Gauthier Plantevin, Bertrand Vandevoorde
• Best Business Model Award to the ITeix Group: Mathieu Bénard, Sami Ajimi, Florent Page, Yanic Stambolich
• Best Storyboard Award to the CORPOSCORE Group: Matthieu Hervé, Jean Baptiste Alla, Gaspard BallanfatIf KEDGE students are selected for the final by the BAYER company, they can win a trip that begins with the letter B: BOSTON, BARCELONA, BERLIN, etc.