Industrial engineering and management master's students at Furtwangen University develop innovative marketing concepts
Once again, an international workshop was held at the Hanzehogeschool in Groningen during the summer semester. As always, the students from Furtwangen University's Internal link opens in the same window:Sales & Service Engineering (SEM) master's degree programme in business administration and engineering took part. The two universities of applied sciences have been cooperating in this field for over two decades.
This year's host and partner of the International Workshop was the Groningen Marketing Faculty for the first time, which itself sent almost 70 students to the event. In total, around 80 students from 19 countries came together to apply the knowledge they had acquired during their studies in 10 specific projects.
The clients were companies from Groningen and the surrounding area − from an event agency to an energy company and a coffee retailer to a start-up. The content covered brand strategies, market analyses and marketing and sales concepts. The workshop was enriched by keynote speeches and an introduction to the creativity technique “Design Thinking”. The students were supervised and coached on all five days by lecturers and professors from the Hanzehogeschool Groningen and Furtwangen University.
The workshop kicked off on the first day with team building, analyses and research on the topic and the company and initial discussions with the clients. Building on this, the students specified the task and approach in consultation with the clients. With the help of design thinking methods, they then went into medias res and into a second round with the clients to finalise which proposals should be pursued and developed further. The workshop concluded with presentations to clients, lecturers and students.
The International Workshop is a highlight of the SEM MBA course. The aim is to come up with solutions within a week based on specific tasks from the business world that satisfy both customers and university managers. Collaboration in international teams represents an additional challenge, which university graduates increasingly encounter in their day-to-day work.