Inaugural Wirecard Innovation Challenge in Munich
On January 20, the final jury of the Wirecard Innovation Challenge took place at Wirecard’s Head Quarter in Munich with the pitch of the three finalists. The winner was Enée Bussac (H05), Customer Service Agent at Klarna and HEC corporate ambassador(*).
Wirecard is a global leader in digital online, in-store, and mobile phone payment solutions aiming at identifying global market trends early and developing its own.
In order to encourage young, creative minds to shake up the payment world with their vision of the future, Sara Maki (M11) Head of Innovation Initiatives at Wirecard Labs and also HEC Corporate Ambassador(*), launched the first Wirecard Innovation Challenge.
1,350 participants signed up on the challenge platform and by the end of the submission phase, 61 promising ideas had been submitted from teams representing 68 countries. After a careful selection process based on the originality, value, and potential of the ideas, three submissions moved on to the Live Pitch round.
A panel of four judges auditioned the three finalists. One of the judges was HEC Affiliate Professor, Laurence Lehmann-Ortega (H93) who hosted the Wirecard External Challenge Webinar during her MS Marketing class. Enée Bussac won the Challenge with his Tailored Contribution System, a turnkey payment system using the blockchain to list and categorize ingredients and coupling it with cryptocurrencies to create a very accurate ecological tax system. The grand Prize is an all-inclusive trip (flight, hotel, tickets, travel budget) to a leading global tech event in 2020 such as SXSW, Austin, Texas.
The HEC Germany representative office actively supported this first Challenge edition, from the initial awareness phase by communicating within the HEC network and outside, to the project accompaniment, coaching and jury composition in the end phase.
The Innovation Challenge has been an inspiring journey for all participating teams and audience members. Many thanks to DLD Conference for hosting the event and very best wishes to the three pitching teams in their future endeavors. The first Challenge might be over, but the next one is just around the corner! Keep an eye out for updates on the topic, prizes, and starting dates for the Wirecard Innovation Challenge 2020 !
(*): an HEC Corporate Ambassador is an HEC Alumni willing to help HEC build closer ties with companies. By spotting opportunities, informing, making connections, an HEC Corporate Ambassador helps to place HEC talents, develop executive education initiatives and more widely, promote HEC and its networks. HEC currently enjoys a dynamic network of more than 200 Corporate Ambassadors around the word, about 60 of them being in Germany.