Thank you to all our participants and challenge providers.
Yesterday evening (4th March) saw the Grand Final of i-Teams Kent 2020. i-Teams launched six weeks ago, with students being placed into teams, given a mentor from the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce, and a team challenge set by one of our challenge providers: TMLEP, Lucas and Southeastern.
Tudor Price from the Chamber got the students to think strategically about the impact of their solutions. To look at competitor companies which gave participants a platform to start building from. In his opening speech, Tudor remarked that ‘all good ideas are nicked’, but on reflection all of the solutions presented were new, unique and innovative.
Over the six sessions, students worked on their presentation skills, which really shone through when delivering their ideas. Over the course of the evening, each team presented to their company and a judging panel with potential awards for the best team leader, best presentational skills and for the best team player.
Team Southeastern
The challenge set for the team six weeks ago was:
‘How can you enhance the passenger experience?’
The group started out by researching their competitors, saying that the first step to providing innovative solutions to the challenge was to know the enemy, to see who they were competing against. As Tudor Price remarked ‘all good ideas are nicked’.
The Southeastern team took inspiration from Pokemon Go, Snapchat Maps and TripAdvisor. Their solutions revolved around augmented reality, journey mapping and virtual reality. The benefit of their solutions would be increased customer satisfaction, however, there would be a high start-up cost and maintenance.
Team Lucas
The challenge set for the team six weeks ago was:
‘Investigate how we can exploit existing and emerging technologies to build upon existing relationships and communicate more effectively with customers to drive a better customer experience.’
The Lucas team looked at the political, economic and social factors surrounding the company and their competitors, and how this can drive satisfaction and feed into business growth.
Their solutions revolved around business client communications. The team acknowledged that the implementations of their solution would have a significant cost and risks associated with it, however, believed that the benefits would outweigh such. The students wanted to ‘create a personalised portal… personalised will make a better journey’.
The feedback from owner Danny Lucas was outstanding:
“you’ve nailed it”
“it is genius”
“it is a really great solution”
Team TMLEP
The challenge set for the team six weeks ago was:
‘How can you generate profit from TMLEP’s portal?’
TMLEP is used mainly by Drs and Lawyers who can access clinical reports. The focus of the team was to ensure that the reputation of the company would not be affected by increasing the profit made from the current portal.
The team worked really well together and enjoyed the interdisciplinary aspects, with one student commenting that they ‘all bring something to the table’, which meant that there were different ideas and points of view given in the early stages. Over the course of the six weeks, multiple ideas were brought to the table, but subsequently discarded due to implementation costs.
Alexander Acaster, UK Clinical Services Manager said that:
“iTeams has been an eye-opening experience and one that TMLEP are keen to be a part of again in the future. The power of the student collective is something not to be understated and the solutions developed by all iTeams were exceptional. TMLEP will definitely be taking on board the solution put forward by the students and will look how we can implement into our future business plans. Here’s to iTeams 2021!”
The winners
Every participant was awarded with a certificate, but recognition was given to the following:
Miss A Elshabrawy – For the Team Player award
Mr J B D Arceno – For Team Leader award
Mr T Etti – For Presentation skills award
Closing remarks from Carole Barron
The grand final was closed by the Director of Innovation and Enterprise Carole Barron. As a judge Carole was overwhelmed by the talent and dedication of the participants saying:
‘It’s innovations like i-Teams that are helping support students’
Feedback on social media
Across the night there was a flurry of social media activity, including the following feedback from companies, judges and the audience.
“We were the recipients of the most unexpected, but wonderful gift from the team. The sheer quality, effort and laser focussed solution presented to us by this clearly very talented and committed team, was truly exceptional and will now allow us to develop an extremely powerful digital client engagement tool that totally hits the target of our business and customer needs and will give our clients the most amazing enhanced experience working with Lucas in the future”.
Danny Lucas,
“Last night’s awards for the #iTeamsKent at @unikent Very impressive presentations and proposed business solutions from the different student teams”.
Adam Blackwood,
“The iTeams Kent final last night was a huge success. The benefit to business of engaging student talent is clear from the experience of Lucas UK Group! Being sat as the EIRA (Enabling Innovation: Research to Application) representative on the panel, I could feel the buzz from all the companies around the student proposals! Superb programme planning and delivery Kent Innovation & Enterprise and Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce”.
Janine Coomber,
Thank you to our challenge sponsors TMLEP, Lucas and Southeastern. Our delivery partner the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce, especially to Tudor Price who came every week to motivate and support our students, our sponsor EIRA: Enabling Innovation, Research to Application. Most of all thank you to the hard work and dedication of our i-Teams students who impressed us with their innovative solutions, commitment and team work.