Win-win for students and startups at the 5-HT Digital Qualifier

What do you get when students spend a semester working intensively on concrete, practice-relevant challenges from companies?

For the 6th time, students have worked on practice-relevant challenges from startups as part of the Digital Qualifier. On 15 June, the students of the Master's programme in Business Information Systems presented their research results on real challenges of companies and startups to Prof. Dr. Martin Selchert at the University of Applied Sciences Ludwigshafen and discussed them afterwards.

Design thinking" is now an established and valued methodology for understanding problems better, looking more closely and ultimately developing better solutions. In the Master's programme in Business Informatics at the Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences, in particular Data Science & Consulting, this methodology is taught in a practical way with a variety of helpful techniques. In order for the students to gain application experience right away, they work out solutions for concrete, immediate and non-trivial problems in practice-integrated case studies with company partners.

In the summer semester, three companies from the chemical industry participated with the help of the 5-HT Digital Hub - Chemistry & Health, namely Berkel Ahk from Ludwigshafen, CibusCell Technology from Speyer and Münch Chemie International GmbH from Weinheim.

At the final presentation of the Design Thinking course, four student teams presented the solutions they had developed with the help of the Design Thinking method. The questions posed by the chemical companies ranged from optimising IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container) logistics, to digital models for the visual presentation of services in customer meetings, to the digital transformation of individual production processes. But it was also about ways and means of orientation and deriving measures within the framework of Future of Work.

Marcus Ruebsam, Co-founder CibusCell and Challenger of the Digital Qualifier is enthusiastic: „The Design Thinking Challenge @HWG-LU was extremely helfpful for us as a Start-Up. We were able to look into municipal utilities and the benefits of our solution. The students were extremely motivated and engaged. To see our solution through their eyes and their systematic approach to Design Thinking was fascinating. Thanks 5-HT for connecting us.”

Stefan Kohl, Managing Director of 5-HT Digital Hub Chemistry & Health praised the students following their presentations: "It's exciting every time to see how the student teams get to grips with sometimes very complex issues and come up with visually prepared and well-presented results."

Prof. Dr. Martin Selchert also looks back on the event with satisfaction: "You can only learn Design Thinking by applying it. Therefore, I am glad and grateful that we were able to conduct practice-integrated case studies again this semester. It's great when the conclusion of students and participating companies is: Win-Win!