The very first EiT Innovation Awards was held May 3. This event was a pitching competition featuring project ideas from EiT student teams, where a winner was to be selected and a total of 10,000 NOK awarded!
By Pernille S. Osmundsen
Experts in Team (EiT) is a master’s course taken by students from all faculties at NTNU. The students work in interdisciplinary teams on projects that aim to create value for society. The Experts in Teamwork Academic Section is currently engaged in a project focusing on enhancing innovation and value creation in student projects. Given SFU Engage’s focus area on student innovation, a collaboration ensued. The objective was to conduct an event where EiT teams could further the value they contributed, and what is more engaging than a competition?
The outcome was an event where students from various EiT villages could showcase the projects they had been working on this spring. The competition was open to all EiT teams to register, and eventually, five groups covering a wide range of problems and solutions took to the stage to present their ideas.
To demonstrate to the students the broad and accessible innovation environment at NTNU, the event started with a presentation on this topic by Ragnhild Nordeng Fauchald. She is a PhD candidate at SFU Engage and explained why it is important to be engaged and the opportunities available when working on innovation.
Following this, the five EiT teams took to the stage, each having five minutes to pitch the problem they aimed to solve and their idea. The judging panel, representing key players in Trondheim’s innovation ecosystem, included members from 6AM Accelerator, Futurum Ventures, Gründerbrakka, and SFU Engage. After the pitches, the panel posed questions that the teams needed to answer before the next team could take the stage. The teams came from five different EiT villages, and these were their project titles:
- Icebreaker: “Lek-E-skap” takes play outdoors to the schoolyard – TBA4856 Innovative Sports Facilities
- How to counteract energy poverty in a smart energy future? – AAR4912 Climate-Neutral Trondheim 2030?
- WattMobile (smart energy administrator) – TIØ4855 Smart Energy Management
- Virtual Theory Test – An innovation project for Statens Vegvesen – PED3801 VR/AR and AI in Learning
- The Salmon Billionaire (knowledge enhancement in aquaculture) – TMR4853 Aquaculture – Technology on the Premises of Biology
The first group to present spoke about their solution to playground equipment issues and said that although they were not experienced presenters, they enjoyed gaining experience pitching their idea. The final group presented a game to enhance expertise in aquaculture in an entertaining way and found it nerve-wracking to be on stage. However, they also expressed excitement at challenging themselves in something so different from their usual academic work. They further shared that it was exciting to learn about the innovation environment in general and to see the possible paths one could take if you have an idea and want to work on a product.
The five teams gave the panel much to discuss, while the rest of the attendees enjoyed some food as the anticipation of who would win grew. 6AM Accelerator provided the winning prize, which was a cheque for 10,000 NOK, along with advisory services to further develop their idea. After careful consideration, the winners were chosen. Anna Johanne Holden Jacobsen, Olav Anglevik Seim, Christian Le, Caroline Grimsrud and Harald Bjerkli, with their idea of using VR for theoretical traffic training walked away with the victory. Proud of their product, they found it exciting to showcase it and experienced the competition as educational. They talked about the importance of being able to communicate and market their idea and were pleased to see that there is a market for such innovative solutions.
Overall, it was a successful event where we got to see the vast scope of ideas that can come to life through the EiT course, and we look forward to future EiT Innovation Awards.