Participants of the International Master in Marketing also had the opportunity to participate in the Marketing Innovation Challenge. A challenge made in partnership with TBWA\Worldwide, a company named as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company for four years running and has been the agency that developed the disruptive advertising campaign of Apple. From April 20th to 22th, all participants had the opportunity to experience working as if they were in a real start-up, searching for the best solution for real problems applying the disruptive innovation framework in the marketing field.
On the first day, Dean Dr. Jordi Diaz gave a warm welcome to the Master in Marketing participants and introduced the basic framework of disruptive innovation. They also listened to Danilo Cascino, Strategy & Innovation Director at TBWA Spain, who explained the importance of getting out of the established paths and recognizing where you get stuck to be able to succeed today. They challenged them to create new business ideas using disruptive innovation.
You have to fall in love with the problem really, fall in love with what’s stopping you from going beyond ordinary thoughts, in order to break it, in order to overtake it. Disruption comes from Latin, which in Latin means break from something. So if there’s no feeling of break, there’s no real disruption.”
Danilo Cascino, Strategy & Innovation Director at TBWA Spain.
As other challenges, the participants had the chance to listen to two innovators to inspire them. In this case, they listened to:
- Giovanni Bernardi (International Master in Finance, Class of 2018), Head of Sales at BizAway. A company that disrupted the business travel industry by offering an all-in-one solution to simplify all aspects of business travel.
- Sana Khouja Laout (International MBA, Class of 2014), Ceo & Founder at Drink Zeena. The wine company disrupted the industry with the first organic and vegan Spanish canned wine.
The last day, participants had to get their hands dirty and work on their projects. They had to analyze problems to choose the best disruptive business solution with the help of EADA Alumnus Guilherme Parente (Master in Marketing, Class of 2008), who is Co-Founder and CEO of Apptite, the largest network of homemade food in Brasil. He acted as a mentor and guided and supported our participants.
Finally they had to present their ideas to the jury composed of EADA’s Dean Jordi Díaz, Strategy & Innovation Director of TWBA, Danilo Cascino and EADA’s Program Director, Marcella van Doorn, who chose the winning project.
The winning project of this first edition of the Marketing Innovation Challenge was “Ironic” – an idea of Martina Möller (Switzerland), Alina Geck (Germany), Antonio C. Ulloa (Cuba), Ana Paula Mendez (Mexico) and Afna Ashraf (India). They set out to find a solution to help Latin American children that suffer from anemia by combining health with play. The goal was to create an innovative toy with the aim of providing micronutrients such as iron to help children that lack them.
The biggest takeaway from Martina Möller was:
