PRME Innovation Challenge

The programme aims to connect companies with next generation innovators and entrepreneurs to catalyze corporate innovation to advance the SDGs. Participating companies will define a challenge specific to their own business and a team of students from PRME Signatories will develop a solution to the company-defined challenge.

The two companies for this year's IC are Manitou Group and Rockwell Automation.

Join the Challenge and be one of two student teams to engage with this leading multinational company to build sustainable business models and solutions.

Objectives:

Overall, this student engagement opportunity provides companies with an additional set of ideas to support their SDG solutions, while giving students from PRME Signatories the opportunity to gain insight into the process of corporate innovation. This would enable students to put their knowledge into practice while contributing solutions to address the SDGs. Students will also gain exposure to top-tier companies and expand their professional and social network.

Criteria for Student Teams

• Student teams should consist of maximum 3-4 students per team.
• Students should form interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate and/or graduate/MBA students.
• Two student teams will be selected to work virtually with the two participating companies (one per company), with the possibility of site visits and in-person workshops if appropriate.

Challenges:

Challenge 1: Manitou Group

Since 2012, Manitou Group has decided to focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an opportunity to be part of the global transformation. To engage the entire company in that transformation and to ensure that CSR is fully integrated into the processes and life of the company, the group has set 13 objectives with quantitative targets to be achieved in 2022. Therefore, sustainable transformation, ownership & empowerment are essential drivers to rethink practices.

At the same time, the Group is developing in a fast-changing environment where the impacts of CSR (climate, ethics, attracting talent, etc.) are evolving and becoming more and more important. These challenges bring new requirements and expectations from various stakeholders, and thus require adaptation to new areas of activities and expertise to bring innovative solutions. On a global scale, the Group needs to anticipate these solutions to define its road map beyond 2022.

Our PRME Challenge is to identify what are the next challenges for the Group and define our next key objectives globally. Enabling collective achievement of these targets will also be key.

Challenge 2: Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation would like to

• explore how to minimize their carbon footprint across our sales team globally by finding ways to efficiently make customer visits, taking in to consideration customer and sales office locations, modes of transportation, energy consumption, and considering emerging technologies.
• The second part of the challenge is to explore ways to effectively reach customers for demonstrations of iTrak. Currently these product demonstrations occur in a small number of sales offices in each region as the size of each iTrak demonstration is too large to transport and the expense is too great to largely duplicate.
• We would like to virtualize, through augmented reality with Emulate3D and Vuforia, the iTrak demonstration, which has the benefit of reducing travel time of customers and sales teams, reduces use of materials to building multiple demonstrations, and creates productivity.

We would like the team to formalize a business case that best implements a phased and prioritized roll out of this technology around the world so that it has the biggest customer impact, while maintaining customer intimacy and reduces our carbon footprint.

If any questions, please reach out to PRMEic@unglobalcompact.org.

Strategic Partner:

Manitou Group (Manitou)

Objectives:

Manitou defined two real-life sustainable development challenges with the aim to harness the creative energy of students to develop solutions.

Students from PRME Signatories have the opportunity to gain insight into the process of corporate innovation while providing Manitou with an additional set of ideas to support their SDG solutions.

Students put their knowledge into practice while contributing solutions to address the SDGs. Students will also gain exposure to a top-tier company and expand their professional and social network. A maximum of two student teams will be selected to work virtually with Manitou, with the possibility of site visits and in-person workshops if appropriate.

Evaluation:

Manitou used a point-based system to select a student team to work with based on the following criteria:

• How well the question was answered
• Feasibility of proposed solution
• Compliance with directions for submissions
• Clarity and structure of presentation