Covid-19 came completely unexpected. Many companies are still busy coping with the effects of the resulting crisis. Despite vaccination, the near future remains uncertain, not to mention other challenges such as global warming. In a panel discussion moderated by Helga Pattart-Drexler, Jakob Kiblböck (SAP), Petra Dobrocka (BYRD) and Christoph Heimel (Österreichische Post) addressed the topic "After the crisis is before the crisis: preparing for an uncertain future" from a business perspective. All panelists agreed that employees are an important success factor and will remain so in the future. The crisis has once again clearly shown the importance of trust towards employees. If leaders give them the freedom to solve problems flexibly it will open up new opportunities that were not foreseeable before.

Topics such as timely human resource management, entrepreneurship of the future and crisis management were also addressed in five hands-on workshops, conducted with our partners Erste Bank, KPMG, Frauendomäne, WU Gründungszentrum and the WU Executive Academy.

"Best Pitch" Award

Application fields for new technologies, promotion of innovation within the company or the future of e-learning - these are only three of 30 innovation projects that the E&I Institute carried out this semester with practice partners such as CERN, Verbund and FESTO. At the E&I Touchdown, all results of the student teams were pitched in just 45 seconds. The best pitches were selected by a jury of experts as well as the public. The jury members were Leon Ahlers (aws Gründerfonds), Dr. Karin Exner-Wöhrer (Salzburger Aluminium AG), Dr. Ute Gebhard (FESTO), Claudia Kofler (aws), Alexander Moser-Parapatits (B&C Group), Markus Raunig (Austrian Startups), Nicole Stroj (Raiffeisen Bank International), Philippe Thiltges (WhatAVenture) and Georg Weber (primeCROWD).

The winner of the category "Best Pitch Bachelor" was the team around the startup MietRadl. MietRadl is a platform for hotels and tourists to facilitate the rental of bicycles and e-bikes. Second place went to Impact Hub Vienna (social impact analysis of RE:WIEN) and third place to Rotable (job platform for the medical sector).  

In the "Best Pitch Master" category, InstaSlide (an AI assistant for presentations), Connected Spaces (platform to rent out freestanding spaces) and bsporti (app to connect recreational athletes) took the top three spots.

The audience also got to choose a winner. The "Audience Award" went to the team of students who worked out an intrapreneurship strategy for Verbund this semester.