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Team Barsinki, a joint team of Aalto University and ESADE were the winners in the C4Bi innovation competition in Barcelona on November 18. Taking part in the competition, which was arranged this year for a third time, were students from ESADE, UC Berkeley, Copenhagen Business School, and Aalto.

The task of the teams chosen for the finals from among more than 60 participants was to come up with new business activities for the technology company HP using the Creativity Audit tool. 

'The proposal of our team included concrete development ideas for HP's strategy.  For instance, the role of a creative process could be established, the freedom of employees could be better utilised, and feedback could be increased in the customer experience', say Leo Josephy and Harri Konola, who took part in the competition.

Criteria for selecting the winners was the quality of the ideas of the team, the efficiency and flow of the team work, and the presentation of the idea itself.  

Leading chef behind the method

Ferran Adrià's elBulliFoundation was involved in organising the competition along with the ESADE university. Photo: ESADE

One of the panels of judges in the competition was top chef Ferran Adrià, the developer of the Creativity Audit. The idea behind the tool is to utilise the processes of gastronomy in corporate activities, which allows the continuous development of new dishes, for instance.

'Business thinking often stems from efficiency, but why can't corporate activities involve the same degree of creativity?' asks Harri Konola.

'By optimising processes and by increasing efficiency we can achieve economic benefits that decline only marginally. However, only through real disruptive innovations it is possible to rise to the position of a market leader', adds third team member Matti Karjalainen. 

In addition to the recognition received in the competition, the team was left with an interesting learning experience as well as new networks and team mates from around the world.

'It is definitely an experience worthy of recommendation - one of the best in our studies', the team members observe.