LightHackers – Open Innovation Challenge
LightHackers: The first Hackathon for the Lighting Industry
Eight Italian startups, selected through the online platform developed by EY, recently took part in the final stage of the ‘iGuzzini Hackathon’ at the companies headquarters in Recanati, Italy, on July 10th-11th, 2017. During those days, they developed ideas and innovative projects aiming to improve the customer experience for both business clients and end-users. The startups worked closely with mentors, iGuzzini staff, and industry experts.
The startups that were selected to participate in the Hackaton took the proposed challenge by leveraging their technological skills, in particular on subjects such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, advanced robotics and sensoring. Various social analogue and digital methodologies and marketing tools such as wearable solutions and content dissemination were used to bring these emerging technology fields and solutions together.
Empowering Innovation and Technology Development
The innovation-oriented initiative for the lighting industry is part of a broader program which aims at further enhancing the role of the customer as a lever to maintain market leadership. It is also a possibilityn to give young entrepeneurs the opportunity to express their creativity, motivate internal resources, attract additional young talents, enrich business know-how with cross-industry experiences and foster the development of a shared design to support growth.
LightHackers – a social and open innovation challenge
LightHackers – The Challenge
The eight start-ups will had to elaborate different experiential proposals exploiting the application of new technologies and unique solutions that could be identified with the iGuzzini brand, vision and history. The solutions needed to reach the customers in a direct way, and allow data gathering in order to improve the user experience, and boost business growth and market competitiveness.
Multidisciplinary Talented Teams
This multidisciplinary initiative aims to engage young talents from all over Italy, experts from different fields and the academic world. The challenge involved 64 participants divided into 8 teams made up of 23 start uppers and 41 other figures (9 students, 6 industry experts, 18 employees and 8 EY consultants).
At the end of the Hackathon, the teams’ proposals were evaluated by the jury according to three criteria: innovative power, potential business impact and user/customer experience. The best project will finally be implemented by iGuzzini, while the 2nd and 3rd will receive a cash prize.
More information and follow-up can be found on the iGuzzini Hackathon website. We at Lighting-Inspiration.com certainly like this initiative and hope many more of these creative sessions will follow!