Can you imagine an application that will tell you how long you’ll have to wait in a restaurant or what you’ll be offered to drink while you’re waiting? What about one that tells you the best way to get to your destination while taking the environment into account? These are only a few of the winning ideas that left their mark at B-Day on 5 April.  

At the sixth edition of this event organised by the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, three innovative business proposals were successful: Easy Q, Green Step and Eat&Share. The first one aims to make waiting in a queue at a restaurant or a concert more pleasant. The second, which calculates the Co2 footprint we leave behind after our journeys to facilitate mobility without damaging the environment.  And the third and final one acts as connection point between people looking for a restaurant and clients who provide detailed descriptions of their experiences.   

Three ideas based on technology with a clear objective: to provide real solutions in a changing world. Three projects that came to life during a day of work in which participating students were divided into groups to meet this challenge. At this edition, the challenge focused on three areas of work: the environment, the sharing economy and the internet of things.  

Design Thinking Methodology 

The three winning teams and the other students had to work on the creation of an attractive and real business proposal based on the design thinking methodology.  Each group had to create an Empathy Map and provide the best solutions to challenges in each of the areas. 

The event, during which festivities for the patron saint of Economics, Saint Vicent Ferrer, were held, involved the participation of exceptional speakers. They gave presentations in each of the areas and then also joined the jury, which evaluated each of the proposals.  

Therefore, in the area of the internet of things, David de Nadal, a Digital Architect at Oracle gave students a talk on: “The Internet of Things: Next is Now!”. De Nadal analysed the reasons behind the use of technology and how the development of the internet of things has made daily life for both people and companies more efficient and expeditious.  

The social entrepreneur Daniel Hires was in charge of introducing the environmental area with a talk on “Advocating for the environment: Designing Sustainability Solutions”. Hires, who formerly worked for the United Nations, underlined the importance of taking care of the environment and taking it into account and paraphrased the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, saying that “in 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish". 

The sharing economy was represented by the co-founder of Nautal, Roger Llovet, who through his talk “The sharing economy, an unstoppable phenomenon” described how his hobby, sailing, became a way of life. “There need to be four large values. You must be capable of taking risks, creative, knowledgeable and analytical” stated the businessman.  

Finally, Irati Lekue, founder of Make The Way and co-founder of Coala, focused on design thinking methodology in his presentation on “User-experience-centred innovation”.

Three areas, three juries

The juries for the three areas also included other businesspeople and UIC Barcelona lecturers. Therefore, projects based on a sharing economy were analysed by Llovet along with the head of business development at Airbnb, Carlos Lascorz; the director of Think Outside The Box Academy, Albert Givernau; the Dean of the Faculty, Marta Mas and the Vice-Dean, Frederic Marimon.

In the area of the environment, the jury consisted of Hires; World Economics lecturer at UIC Barcelona, Kristian Estévez; Corporate Governance and Entrepreneurship lecturer at UIC Barcelona, Nina Magomedova and Finance and Accounting lecturer, Ernest Solé.

 Finally, the jury for the internet of things area included De Nadal; sales consultant for the Oracle cloud platform, Jordi Villena; director of the Executive Master’s Degree in Big Data Science at UIC Barcelona, Carlos Cosials; Marçal Amado, Operations Management lecturer at UIC Barcelona, and the director of the University Master’s Degree in Business Administration and Production Systems at UIC Barcelona, Jasmina Berbegal.