Good practices of digital co-creation

Every semester the Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre (S2BMRC) of the Münster School of Business carries out at least one pro bono project with a social actor to actively participate in human and social development. To increase awareness of the association in Münster, the student project aimed to identify the target group, develop a unique communication concept for social media and other advertising and reach new potential donors.

In cooperation with Alexianer GmbH, students from the marketing of the Münster School of Business department developed a sustainable business plan for the "Pelikanhaus". The "Pelikanhaus" is a project of the Alexianer GmbH and the Clemenshospital, where parents of children, who are especially hospitalized for a long time, are offered a "home".

The theme of the workshop was determined as “Biodesign in Climate Change and Disaster Combat”. The aim is to raise awareness about Biodesign, to create a productive and creative discussion environment with the participation of undergraduate and graduate students studying in different disciplines, and to guide young researchers interested in Biodesign.

The project's main goal was to create an environment in which students are involved in initiatives that address local non-governmental organisations' needs using systematic project-based methodologies and digital media expressions. Within the project, academic students created digital stories about local symbols and well-known engineers.

In a Science-to-Society semester project, the Münster School of Business students developed a campaign for the Henri-Thaler Association. This organisation supports families with children who have cancer, especially financially. However, the association from Ennepetal is hardly known outside its region. Additionally, it has been hard for them to get donations during the pandemic. This is why the students developed a concept for digital fundraising.

In 2018 Polish Federation of Engineering Associations (NOT) started an initiative to provide tech entrepreneurs with insights regarding starting up and developing a business. Thus, it established collaboration with several universities to deliver specialised training workshops.

The project focuses on fostering students' transversal skills, such as collaborative problem-solving and interpersonal communication, which are critical for graduates' success in a work environment. By taking the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced educators to find new ways of offering work-based learning in an online environment as an opportunity, the project aims to collect and synthesise best practices.

The joint project aims to develop educational approaches based on gaming techniques and digital escape rooms to teach social entrepreneurship. Therefore, students from Germany, Portugal, The Netherlands, and Spain will be able to work together in multicultural groups to solve global challenges.

The Digital Teachers Programme aims to digitalize teaching, become part of digital transformation, and transfer these digital competencies to primary and secondary school students.

Lean innovation offers an alternative route to innovation: a cost-effective and low-tech approach. It prioritises design thinking and agile experimentation to generate value-maximizing products and services, thus helping small businesses grow despite their economic conditions. In addition, unlike traditional innovation, which is resource-dependent, lean innovation is a knowledge and skills-based approach, so vocational training organizations can play a key role in developing these skills. The project's overall goal is to introduce the lean innovation skillset to education system and economies.

ESCAPE2 is an Erasmus+ Project that responds to the tourism challenges faced by rural regions in Europe such as unemployment, or low levels of productivity. It is developed in rural regions of Europe countries as Spain, Italy, Ireland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Portugal, Romania, Greece, and Turkey. As part of the project, an online course on "How to develop a quality rural tourism strategy" was developed. The course offers an intuitive, effective online and blended learning course, accessible from the project website and fully optimised for mobile use in the partners' languages as well as in English.

As part of a S2BMRC project, students from the Münster School of Business developed various tools to help the NGO from South Africa and its learners. YAT (Young Aspiring Thinkers) is an NGO that helps students learn about different career paths. Learners spend four years in various programs and learn not only about other professions but also about their skills and preferences. One group of students built an innovation tool that allows YAT Learners to identify and solve regional problems. The other group of students developed a KPI (key performance indicators) Dashboard to enable the learners to track their development process during these four years.

As part of the University of Szczecin research agenda, researchers representing the organisation have been engaged in the research project on knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in Indonesia. They had to work closely with Indonesia university and also with NGO organisations providing support for local businesses. Many students, entrepreneurs and some NGOs were engaged in the process.