HR4RS stamp
Raul Garcia Hemonnet
Alicia Peñas Sanjuán, Paula Mercedes Martín Uribe and Sara Rodríguez Vélez are the members of the URJC team that will compete next May to win the first prize of the 'Vodafone Campus Lab 2022'. The first two are students of the Marketing (English) degree at the Madrid campus, while the third studies the double degree in Business Administration and Marketing at the same campus.
Over the next six weeks they will face two other teams of students from other universities. The three have been selected for the final, among a total of 469 students from a total of 19 universities.
In the final, the team, closely supervised by the Marketing and Market Research Area professor, María García de Blanes Sebastián, will have to develop their project to face the challenge chosen throughout the process: provide innovative solutions for small and medium businesses.
Turn an idea into a possible innovative business
According to Santiago Gómez Ruiz, academic director of Innovation and Transfer at the Office of the Vice President for Innovation, Transfer and Business Relations, and coordinator of the URJC's participation in 'Vodafone Campus Lab', "the project that has been carried out has been based in the creation of a QR, associated with different functionalities that will allow the digitization of services in small and medium businesses. Some of the associated services that could be launched will be product reservations, virtual testers, access to information, etc. in order to improve the customer experience globally”.
The team must present this project to the jury chosen by Vodafone in a final event scheduled for June 13, 2022. To get here they have had to go through a demanding selection process in which, in addition, they have received training on the five digital competences marked by the EU: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, security and problem solving.
Now, the three URJC students, together with their tutor, are in the final phase of the development of their project in which they will evolve and validate their prototype to turn it into a Business Model. In addition, they will design and perfect their 'elevator pitch' that they will present to the jury of the event.
According to Professor García de Blanes, "The group wants to be able to carry out its project in a tangible way, that is, to go from the idea to action, from the general to the specific, to be able to make its value proposition clear so that can be carried out. At the present time, the members are very excited to be able to start their project and that Vodafone, with this initiative, will help them achieve it. These students are motivated much more than the prize, the possibility of putting their idea into practice”.
If, finally, the URJC team manages to be chosen by the jury, the students will receive a prize valued at up to 10.000 euros for the development of their business model along with 3 months of 'mentoring' by Vodafone professionals.
In any case, the presence in the final is already an important milestone for these URJC students, which serves as an example of the talent that develops in the university classrooms.