Nova SBE BOX Challenge: "I am very glad I participated and can highly recommend it to every student"

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"I wasn’t too sure what to expect from it, however I am very glad I participated and can highly recommend it to every student." says Melanie Haket, a student of the Master's in Management of Nova SBE, who was part of the winning team of the SIBS BOX Challenge.

"When we proposed 4 ideas to the challenge champion, with his inside, we were able to select the best one. The next two days we worked on this idea and created the business model around it. A lot of team calls and effort later, our final idea ended up being the winning idea", she said, adding, "I think it is a great way for students to get creative while applying aspects of their studies to real company problems. On top of this, students get the possibility to talk and build relationships with someone from the company. My experience with the challenge has been incredibly positive and personally this has been one of my favorite things at NovaSBE. The creative aspect and challenging problem made this a really fun experience and as mentioned before I would highly recommend it to everyone ".

For Maksym Symonyshen, who is attending a Master's in Finance, the articulation between students, specialists and companies was also an added value that helped him acquire new skills:

"I think that initiatives like the BOX Challenge, where the university partners with companies from all sorts of diverse sectors, are of utmost importance for the development of the students as it allows them to work with real professionals and to solve tangible problems that companies are working hard to solve. In my own experience, coming from a Finance background, through the BOX Challenge I got an opportunity to expand my skill set and learn more about, for example, how should companies monetize data, and about the problem with the overflow of data that companies all over the world face. All these key insights will be extremely relevant for my future career, and that’s all thank to experiences like the BOX challenge."

The student, who took part in the Schréder Hyperion's Box Challenge, also assured us that "the constant feedback" he received "from the firm was clear and added value, which made the process of overcoming the challenge even more rewarding and engaging."

Mariia Leva, on the other hand, a student of the Master's in Impact Entrepreneurship and Innovation, stressed that her challenge was "fun and intense" and that "it was very curious to look outside of my bubble and see what other challenges and companies are there".

O New SBE BOX Challenge is a Business Open Experience for companies to take the risk and rethink their business. During 5 days, students are organized in teams to create, develop, plan, and design an innovative solution for a given organizational challenge, in an intensive ecosystem of creative problem solving.

If you are interested in participating in future editions of this great challenge, please contact us by e-mail: coinnovationlab.exed@novasbe.pt.