Samsung Innovation Camp: winning and shortlisted projects presented at Università degli Studi di Verona

The closing ceremony of the Samsung Innovation Camp, held at the Università degli Studi di Verona, saw awards being presented to the groups submitting the best projects. The camp, the first to be organised at the university, was sponsored by two local companies: Gruppo Veronesi and Manni Group.

The initiative was developed by Samsung Electronics Italia in collaboration with Randstad, to help enable students from a network of Italian public universities to take part in innovation training and find out more about potential careers.

Six projects were selected from over 1,000 submissions for the final phase of the camp, based on their responses to business cases commissioned by Gruppo Veronesi and Manni Group.

Two winning projects

• One prize was awarded by Gruppo Veronesi to a group entitled Stardust, whose project was named Building Up The Chain. This used games and visual storytelling to create greater engagement among Veronesi employees, with an interactive app called Holding You serving as a form of internal communication by allowing them to undertake learning modules together.
• Alé, the group that won the Manni Group award, developed a way of helping the company to communicate its commitment to sustainable development, based on its sustainability goals. Their original idea was to express these objectives using interactive graphics based on the architecture of the Palazzetto, Manni Group’s distinctive Verona headquarters.

The ceremony was attended by Prof. Marco Minozzo of the University of Verona; Anastasia Buda, corporate citizenship manager of Samsung Electronics Italia; Giuliano Allegri, human resources director at Gruppo Veronesi; and Manni Group CEO Enrico Frizzera.

Samsung Innovation Camp

The main aim of this second Samsung Innovation Camp (see www.innovationcamp.it) was to teach students skills complementing those traditionally taught in academic settings, by enabling them to study the potential of new digital technology and work with local companies.This year, for the first time, a large number of companies from all over Italy were involved. The programme was designed to encourage students to innovate in key sectors of the Italian economy, and to ease the often difficult transition from school to work. It also emphasised the need to acquire interdisciplinary skills and collaborate with students studying for other degrees. The event enabled students to build on knowledge acquired at university and at the camp itself, and put this into practice by working directly with companies. It allowed them to find out more about businesses in their local areas by carrying out real-life projects with them.

The camp provided students at eighteen universities across the country with an e-learning platform, consisting of a dashboard of eight online multimedia lesson and content modules. These covered key aspects of contemporary digital technology including business, digital marketing, technology, analytics, and cyber-education, and were complemented by best-practice studies and presentations by industry professionals.

The best sixty students from each university, based on their test marks after completing the eight modules, took part in the second phase of the programme. This involved classroom teaching in their own universities, building on the content of the online modules and provided by university lecturers and Samsung and Randstad employees.

During the lecture phase, companies local to each university assigned innovation projects relevant to their own areas of business. Students carried these out in multidisciplinary groups to encourage teamwork between people of differing skills. Each company then hosted a final event where the individual or group submitting the best project gave a presentation to its employees and to representatives of Samsung, Randstad, and the university.

The second Samsung Innovation Camp: facts and figures

Over 10,000 students from all over Italy registered for the second camp, with women slightly outnumbering men at 54 percent to 46 percent. Most were current students, but 25 percent were recent graduates.

The online and classroom modules provided students with highly interdisciplinary training, underlining the fundamental importance of digital technology skills to people in all walks of life. This was confirmed by the wide variety of degrees they were studying for, led by economics and finance (30%), engineering (13%), humanities (9%), media studies (6 percent), law (5%), marketing (5%), and politics (3%).

Samsung Electronics

Samsung inspires the world and shapes its future with revolutionary technology, transforming the world of TVs, smartphones, wearable technology, tablets, electrical appliances, network and memory systems, large-scale integration systems, and LED solutions. For more information, visit the Samsung Newsroom at www.samsung.com.

Randstad

The Dutch multinational Randstad, founded in 1960, selects, recruits, trains, and supplies human resources. It is the world leader in HR services, with 4,858 subsidiaries in thirty-nine countries employing 38,331 people and achieving revenue of €23.3 billion in 2017.

Randstad Italia was established in 1999, and has some 2,000 employees and over 300 subsidiaries. It is the first employment agency in Italy to achieve SA8000 social accountability and GEEIS (Gender Equality European and International Standard) certifications. For more details, go to www.randstad.it.

Gruppo Veronesi

Gruppo Veronesi is Italy’s leading integrated food supply chain, making, processing and distributing animal feeds and traditional Italian gourmet meat products. Its market-leading brands Veronesi, AIA and Negroni employ over 8,000 people at twenty-three factories in Italy.

The group achieved revenue of €2.97 billion in 2018, making it one of the country’s top five food companies by sales. In the same year, the company sold products to seventy-nine countries, and exports accounted for 16 percent of total sales. 

Manni Group

The Manni Group, established in 1945 and based in Verona, is an international producer of steel components, insulating panels, modular structures, and renewable energy.

Driven by globalisation and innovation, the group is committed to safe, efficient, and sustainable construction, and researches and develops steel construction products, services, and solutions.

It has fourteen subsidiaries in Italy and abroad, operating in three main areas: steel processing (where its main brands are Manni Sipre, Manni Inox, and Manni Green Tech), insulating panels (Isopan), and renewable energy services (Manni Energy).