Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Rightly said by Steve Jobs, out-of-the-box thinking and the appetite to stay curious is the distinguishing factor to be a successful top knotch player in the market.
EDHEC Open Innovation Challenge is one such event organized by EDHEC in partnership with different universities and companies to prepare the leaders of tommorow.
I and 2 of my best friends at EDHEC, Sagar Ranjan and Sheetal Tayal, chose to participate in the event with Volkswagen after considering the different problem statements and our competencies to understand them. Volkswagen's problem statement was to increase the after-sales for the out-of-warranty vehicles. We were joined by 2 other students, one from EDHEC and another one from École centrale de Lille.
It was a very enticing task where we applied the theory of design thinking into principle and drafted our solution for a customer centric problem.
We did a lot of market research on various automobile brands in France and other countries. A lot of surveys were made and social media such as Facebook and Whatsapp were used as distribution channels. Our final idea was appreciated highly by the Volkswagen representatives including the Head of Sales, Volkswagen France himself.
To enhance the visual appeal of our idea and to give it a life, I designed the Mobile app prototype with the help of Adobe Photoshop and Proto.io. You can see the designs at the top of this article.
We also did a roleplay to better portray our idea to the crowd. And finally, all the efforts kicked in and we were recognized as the winners from the Volkswagen Group Team. We later entered the final challenge to compete with 72 other teams and present our idea and live prototype to a jury of 15 members.