MCI recognizes innovative business ideas

The legendary MCI Creativity Award has once again drawn attention to several brilliant business ideas. Five (groups of) students from all areas of study at MCI were able to attain the highly-coveted prize this year.

With the assistance of STARTUP.TIROL, the Tyrol Federation of Austrian Industries, and Die Presse daily newspaper, MCI has been able to hand out attractive cash and material prizes of more than 4,000 euros to the most innovative business concepts of its students.

The award winners and their ideas:

• First Place:
  Marcel Lettenbichler, Florian Haberl (Business & Management)
  Chillice: a new way to chill your beer.
  
  
• Second Place:
  Maximilian Nißlein, Antonia Lex, Benjamin Obexer, David Patsch, Franziska Victoria Perle, Vanessa Santrač, Nora Schroeder, Jan Dominik Speidel, Dominik Weiskopf, Julia Widmann, Yvonne Wohlfahrter, Julia Zimmermann (Biotechnology)
  An optimized protein for sustainable cheese production: our mission is to provide the biotechnological basis to enable dairies to achieve maximum efficiency and sustainability.
  
  
• Third Place:
  Kevin Höcherl (Biotechnology)
  Biolation: a new method of skin-friendly hair treatment.
  
  
• Fourth Place:
  Vera Maria Matzak, Giulia Szabo, Ferdinand von Liel, Maximilian Schweinberger (Nonprofit, Social & Health Care Management)
  #boostyourkarma reduces prejudices, creates an inclusive place of encounter, provides everybody with the opportunity to take on social responsibility, and supports local charity organizations while making you look stylish.
  
  
• Fifth Place:
  Daniel Mur-Spiegl (Management, Communication & IT), Fabian Kainz (International Business & Management)
  Flitz.io provides personalized information in projects based on the interests of project staff to reduce the amount of time required to gather relevant information.

The MCI Creativity Award is awarded annually to honor excellent business and product ideas. It is designed for all MCI students driven by their entrepreneurial spirit to take on economic and social responsibilities. For this year’s award, altogether 50 students demonstrated their creativity and entrepreneurial skills. The submissions represented the entire range of MCI study and research opportunities, coming from both economic and social sciences as well as different fields of technology and life sciences. The five award winners were determined by a jury of experts in a multi-stage selection procedure.

Marcus Hofer, CEO of STARTUP.TIROL: “The MCI Creativity Award provides students with an opportunity to address central questions related to the market potential of their own ideas. It is incredible what the creative minds of MCI students have on offer!”

Bernd Ebersberger, head of research, innovation and entrepreneurship at MCI: “The MCI Creativity Award is a great way to encourage our students to form a business. The benefits of this are manifold: not only the local economy profits from the student ideas, but also the students gain a lot from the individual feedback on and support for their entrepreneurial projects.”

MCI Rector Andreas Altmann: “As the Entrepreneurial School^®, we are particularly committed to promoting and challenging the entrepreneurial spirit of young talents. With the Creativity Award, MCI and its partners provide important impulses for entrepreneurial thinking and actively influence the Tyrolean startup environment.”