Whether in your studies, a real-life (ECIU) challenge or in your future career, the need to develop your intercultural competences and become able to work with anyone and anywhere in the world is becoming more and more important. Being connected with other countries and other cultures can provide you with wonderful opportunities for collaboration and new and refreshing insights. To accommodate such creative collaboration, it is important to make sure you have the right tools for effective teamwork in multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary groups. With this course, you will gain practical insights into intercultural competences by creating your own Citizen Science project! During this micro-module, you will learn to better understand and work within diverse groups, how to improve on your communicative skills and create an effective team, and how you can apply and present your solutions in a broad variety of contexts. 

For more information and the latest updates, check out [https://www.utwente.nl/en/intercultural-competences/](https://www.utwente.nl/en/intercultural-competences/)

University of Twente

Intercultural Competences

Guiding practical insights through Citizen Science

Critical and innovative thinking

Inter-personal skills

Global citizenship

The challenge is to find innovative, creative and at the same time feasible solutions to realize sustainable mobility connections and enhance the biodiversity of the urban ecosystem.  
  
In the city of Trento, an area in which the natural and anthropic environment contrast and merge, a new and exciting phase of change is opening up in the area of mobility. Within this framework, it is necessary to support people in overcoming geographical, orographic differences, addressing environmental, social and economic objectives.

Member universities may require additional information from applicants. Please read the application information section carefully and include any extra required information in this section.

Other

CV (Curriculum Vitae) is a document that summarizes your educational and professional history. It must provide a detailed overview of your academic and work experience, skills, achievements, and qualifications.

Transcript of Records is an official document issued by your home university. It specifies the name of the institution, the academic programme you are enrolled in, the list of courses taken up until the current period, the exams or tests you passed, the grades and the credits you earned. 

Transcript of Records

Motivation letter is a personal statement and it might include a brief introduction of yourself, explanation why are you interested in the learning opportunity you are applying to, any relevant experience or skills that you have, your goals and how this opportunity will help you achieve them, This document should not be more than 400 words.

Motivation Letter

University of Trento

From Peaks to Pavement

Transforming Mobility in Hilly Areas of Trento with Sustainable Solutions focusing on Urban Biodiversity

As each challenge has its own specificities, the course develops its content organically, and different teams might be exposed to different pieces of content. Common topics nonetheless include business analysis methodologies (e.g., SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, scenario back-casting, …), business research methods basics (e.g., inductive research design, designing broad semi-structured interviews, designing surveys, …), use of data banks (e.g., Statista, Our World In Data, World Bank, Eurostat, …), and more.  
Suitable topics for business challenges might include market / business environment analysis (main forces affecting the business, suppliers, partners, competition, environmental issues), sustainability and social issues, business modelling, go-to-market strategies, and more.  
All challenges are sourced either from the EIT Digital Innovation Action Lines (within Activities, Partners / Business Community projects) or are collected by the course’s teachers in the university ecosystem.

I&E Studies

Entrepreneurship, technology and innovation

Innovation is a high-risk process. To understand and manage opportunities and risks characterising innovation processes, it is important to understand how innovation emerges and why across the industry boundering supporting innovation processes. Applying an ecosystemic approach to innovation helps to reduce costs and increase novelty. However, new approaches are needed to handle complexity. This is particularly important to design effective strategies to solve challenges related to both business and society.

SOI-058 Innovation Ecosystems

Challenge Provider: The Italian winery Schenk Italia, [www.schenkitalia.it](http://www.schenkitalia.it) 

Final Prize: Winner: 2.000 euros. Runner ups (second and third): 500 euros

**Background**

Schenk Italia, **one of the major wineries in Italy**, producer of wines and sparkling wines since 1952, has experienced many evolutions and changes over the years. After the foundation in Reggio Emilia, in 1960 the winery moved to Ora (Alto Adige) and the associated wineries became two in 2011 with the acquisition of Bacio della Luna, the **Valdobbiadene**winery dedicated to the production of sparkling wines with a focus on **Prosecco**. The third winery was included in 2016 with a small estate in **Montepulciano (Tuscany**), Azienda Agricola Lunadoro, with 12 hectares of entirely organic vineyards.

For some time now Schenk has been focusing on the **sustainability of processes and products**. After a complete analysis of the processes - including production and energy costs-, effective action was taken, and a number of products very much in line with this sustainable approach were developed.

The challenge and focus of the company is now to ensure that all the efforts and commitment to sustainability are **communicated**in a complete and exhaustive way, by conveying a very clear message about where the company is going to: A concrete message - rather than mere “poetry”- that gives the consumer the certainty that we are working on something real.  We know that “organic”, “eco-sustainable”, and “green” are often used just as shining labels: how can we **avoid the “Green-washing trap”** and communicate that our **commitment to sustainability** is serious and reliable?

**The challenge**

The Sustainable Wine Race

Can Schenk’s sustainability be communicated in a strong and **reliable** way - and not just as a common slogan? Can we avoid the “Green-washing trap”? What is making “our” sustainability different from competitors?

**Expected impact**

Ideal outcome of the Challenge is for Schenk:

- Getting original views, opinions and analyses from fresh minds outside our working context where, very often, we take too many things for granted and we do not notice some details that are important and could make the difference.

Innovative Ideas that are, however, concrete and applicable in an industrial reality that has to deal (unfortunately) with costs, last minute requests from each country, with increasingly tight deadlines.

Concrete communication projects that will allow us to develop a communication package to be conveyed through the appropriate channels, with the aim to distinguish ourselves and the company from the competitors - who talk about the same topics over and over but take no real action.

The Sustainable Wine Race

The Italian winery challenge

As a graduate student, pitching yourself in the hope to obtain a job opportunity can be very hard: lack of confidence can creep in, compromising the outcome of your efforts. This course will teach how to present yourself with confidence, providing you with the right tools to communicate effectively and go from frustration to pride in your job search.  

Here’s an overview of the content:

- How to create a great in-person first impression

- The structure of a winning cover letter

- Interviews structure and preparation technique

SOI-092 Pitch Yourself

Do you believe that technologies are automatically transforming our cities into ‘smart’ ones? 

The objective of this challenge is to leverage open data and develop creative and practical citizen-centric services. Cities are generally not able to give an effective answer to the differentiated set of citizens' needs, and to serve on demand. Students should identify how data-driven services can have a positive impact in different areas of application, such as transportation, public safety, health and well-being, education, or community engagement. To this end, they should be able to deal with data in terms of access, integration, analysis and visualization with the ultimate goal of extracting relevant knowledge by exploiting proper data science tools. Students will explore how to address the needs and preferences of the residents of the Autonomous Province of Trento (PAT) while enhancing their quality of life through open data-driven solutions.

CaaS: Build the City You Need

This course simulates real challenges in order to teach students two different methodologies to deliver meaningful solutions to challenge providers. In the challenge approach, understanding the problem is often considered half the way to its solution. Students are stimulated to gather information in creative ways, focusing on the problem without jumping to solutions. They will then pass on to the next phase (i.e. idea generation) once the problem, the stakeholder, the challenge and the methodology have been exhaustively analyzed.

We then take the opposite view and students are instructed to be concrete and effective in the generation of meaningful ideas and projects for the challenge provider.

We will also stress the importance of the final implementation of a sound action plan based on the information gathered in the first phase. Students will develop fields of play, or scenarios, where innovation is more likely to happen.

SOI-070 Challenge Action Plan

This course provides an overview of Data Governance in terms of terminology, frameworks, processes, roles, and tools to put in place an effective data governance strategy and operating model.

The role of data quality and data protection in data governance will be also presented jointly with the importance of a data culture within a company or organization. During the course, several case studies will be presented to provide concrete examples of the different aspects of data governance from the business and innovation world.

SOI-093 Data Governance

Media and information literacy

The company, which is the **market leader** in Italy, currently produces and sells almost exclusively to HORECA. The market share related to food retailers is limited and mainly concentrated in the Easter period (salad with flowers). The expectation is to **increase the knowledge** of consumers about the consumption and use of flowers as **ingredients**to prepare food and **raise the sale volume** at the supermarket by 50% after the challenge.

THE CHALLENGE is to **increase the use of flowers** in human nutrition as ingredients in the preparation of dishes and drinks or with innovative food processes, and increase sales of **edible flowers** at the supermarket.

Member university

University of Trento

Member university

University of Trento

Learning opportunities of University of Trento