The best Danish contribution to the Stanford tournament has been named

Do you remember what happened to the money you held in your hand just yesterday? Why there is less money on your account now than last time you checked? And would you start saving up if the bank were to remind you of your dreams?

Making saving money fun

That is the idea behind ”Memory Banking”, which won the Danish version of the innovation competition for students from all over the world, ’Global Innovation Tournament’ (GIT). During this year’s challenge ’Make Saving Money Fun’, the students had to come up with ideas to overcome the global crisis by saving in a new and more entertaining way. The rules were simple: the idea and the message were to be illustrated on video, and the recording was to last for no more than three minutes.

- Having to synthesise the project with consumer-driven innovation provided the tournament with a challenging dimension. The participants had to move away from the traditional brainstorming process and introduce more ’action’-inspired innovation. They used video sketching as a tool to help them understand the end-user and to illustrate their idea in the tournament. We have watched many of the participants closely and helped them with workshops, courses, etc., and it was really interesting to be a part of that process, Lucia Velasco, Project Developer for IDEA House CBS and GIT 2009, says.

Interdisciplinary cooperation pays off

Anne Stube Holst, MSc student in Business Administration and Philosophy at CBS, was part of the team that won the Danish final. They have won a trip to Stanford where they will get to experience the Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University first-hand and compete with the international finalists.

- The winning team consisted of students from CBS, the University of Copenhagen and the IT University of Copenhagen. It is a truly great example of how a mix of competences that complement one another as well as different institutional approaches may help create a foundation for effective innovation. One of the reasons why ’Memory Banking’ won is because their enhancement of the net banking concept is user-friendly, has a commercial approach to innovation and really makes it interesting to check your account statements, Lucia Velasco says.