Congratulations winners of InnoCity 2012!

Yesterday, the 15th of February, the final seminar of InnoCity 2012 was held in the City hall of Lappeenranta. Everyone felt the excitement when all teams presented the results of their hard work to other competitors and the prestige jury.

This year, the quality level of students' reports and presentations was very high and surprised the judges. The task of choosing the winners was not easy! After the jury deliberated, all competitors received roses and certificates as a thank you for their participation and commitment in InnoCity.

In the end, the winners were annouced and rewarded with the 1000 euros cash prize. Team 4edges won the Myllymäki assigment and team Future managers collected the prize in the SaiPa assigment. Congrats to both teams!

The party continued in the near by restaurant Olé where all competitors and the organizers joined for dinner and enjoyed the evening together. This was a great year for InnoCity! Thank you all competitors and followers of the competition, see you next time!

The assignments are published

On Friday 13th, the competitors received the assigments. Here, you can all read them:

THE ASSIGNMENT OF MYLLYMÄKI

Myllymäki is a downhill skiing centre in South Karelia. It is situated 6 km from the centre on Joutseno and less than 20 km from the airport of Lappeenranta.

The downhill skiing centre has six lighted slopes, four lifts, and a lift and slope for children. The vertical is 70 meters and the length of the slopes varies from 300 to 600 meters. The number of slopes and lifts is limited.

Myllymäki also has cross-country tracks and a sledding hill. In addition, it offers other services such as a skiing school, maintenance, renting and storage of ski equipment, café and a restaurant, a sauna, and campfire. There is also a caravan park in the area and a small cottage of 60 m² that can be rented for various occasions.

The budget for the suggested plans is 5000 euros.

In the report and the presentation, please answer the following questions:

• Customer satisfaction
• Who are the customers of Myllymäki?
• The maintenance costs in this business are high. In the case of Myllymäki, how should customer satisfaction be guaranteed when taking the costs into consideration? What are the most important actions for the company?
• What actions could increase the satisfaction of Myllymäki’s customers (that do not exist now, or could be improved somehow)? How satisfaction is or should be measured in this case?
• Sales per customer
• Can Myllymäki increase the sales per customer?
•  In which service/product areas can this be done and explain how. What actions are needed?

The assigments are published!

On Friday 13th, the competitors received the assigments. Here, you can all read them:

THE ASSIGNMENT OF SAIPA

SaiPa plays in the ice hockey SM-league which is by far Finland’s most popular sports league. The SM-league interests 76 % of Finnish over 15-year-old men and 52 % of women (Sponsor Insight). The company Liiga-SaiPa Ltd was founded 2000. In addition to the SM-league team, the company is in charge of A-junior team.  During the season, over 100 000 spectators come to see the games in the ice rink. Over all SaiPa is the most popular team in TV, newspapers, and radio in the South Karelia area. SaiPa also organizes other events in the ice rink and is responsible for the catering services there.

The assignment is to increase the visibility and attractiveness of the team, also among the tourists and inhabitants of South Karelia that come originally from abroad or other regions of Finland. The assignment also includes the plans of increasing the additional sales in the games such as the restaurant services and fan products. The budget for the plans in the assignment is 5000 euros.

The competitors should examine the ice rink and visit the games of SaiPa the 14^th and 17^th of January.

In the report and the presentation, please answer the following questions:

• Visibility of SaiPa
• What is the target group of SaiPa’s games? Describe their consumption habits.
• What marketing actions and channels should SaiPa use to get the team more visibility and attractiveness in the South Karelia area? New marketing channels, messages and styles are appreciated, give examples.
• Which marketing actions are most important and should be put to practice?
• Sales per customer
• How could the sales of the additional products be increased during the games?
• In which areas of services/products can this be done?
• How can the experience of the customers be improved?

The competitors are chosen!

InnoCity got over 50 applications this year. That is huge, thank you everyone for applying! It was decided that instead of 6 teams, 8 teams compete in the competition of 2012. InnoCity proudly presents the new competitors!

In the Myllymäki assignment:

Jonas, Ksenia, Miikka, Woshib
Anastasia, Emils, Joonas, Valeria
Kirill, Janne, Daniil, Artem
Maria, Santeri, Sandeep, Ali

And in the SaiPa assignment:

Aleksandar, Bahnam, Eetu, Sampsa
Juha-Pekka, Maya, Mihai, Pavel
Aleksi, Anastasia, Ekaterina, Panu
Kaire, Suvi, Alexandra, Maria

GOOD LUCK TO ALL, LET THE BEST TEAMS WIN!

HOW TO APPLY FOR INNOCITY??

THIS IS HOW YOU APPLY FOR THE COMPETITION:

All students of LUT and Saimaa UAS can apply individually or in teams of four. In total 24 students (6 teams) are chosen for the competition. Teams have to be multicultural (at least 2 nationalities, where one is finnish) and represent different study programs. One member of the team sends the CVs of all members in one email.

Send your CVs and justifications for why you should be a competitor via email. The deadline for the applications is December 4th.

Applications and additional information: marjut.bragge(at)saimia.fi or tuula.paakkonen(at)lappeenranta.fi.

InnoCity 2012 is soon here!!

The third InnoCity competition starts in January 2012!

The recruiting of students begins on week 45. Every student from LUT and Saimaa UAS can apply by sending their CVs and contact info via e-mail to marjut.bragge(at)saimia.fi. They also have to remember to include their justifications on why they are the right people for the competition.

Get into the mood by watching videos from the last competition (http://www.innocity.fi/)!

The winners of InnoCity 2011: FUSION and SIMO's ANGELS!!

InnoCity competition for this spring has come to an end.

The new fabulous winner in Säräpirtti's assignment is team FUSION!Congratulations!

Ravirata's assignment winner is charming SIMO's ANGELS, congratulations!

Thank you for your effort and good luck with your studies!

Best wishes, Maria & Marjut

Team Simo's Angels: Daria, Ha and Karina. Simo is missing from this photo.

Team Fusion: Alexey, Maria, Annamari and Alexandra.

Final stages

Last moments, last thoughts. We are pulling forward. Not so much to do anymore. Deadlines. Gotta love ‘em. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Nevermind which place of the 3 we take in the results, we have made 3 friends. This is nice. Fingers tired. No more....:)

SIMO'S ANGELS - week 4

OKAAAAAY! So we've finally made our video! Check it out!

SIMO'S ANGELS - week 3

Heeeey, we are here again to sum up everything that happened during the last week, 3rd week of the competition!

So, on 4 April we gave a short presentation for the jury and received valuable feedback from them. That helped a lot during the week because we had a clear view of what needs to be done.

On 10 April we all went to the race track and we even won money! :D

Probably this gave us inspiration and we did a lot for our assignment yesterday!

Unbelievable, but InnoCity is ending in one week...

So we now need to put the finishing touches on our report and make the video!