Driving ideas forward - together and courageously!

Last September, twelve dual students spent two weeks in the Mountain Innovations Lab developing innovative product and experience ideas. In this first workshop, the participants worked in four deliberately mixed groups on approaches at concept level, which can now be developed further within the company.

The Mountain Innovations Lab is an internal competence centre in which expertise, resources and the potential of different partners are bundled in order to find strategies together or to strengthen domestic alpine tourism. The approaches are diverse and go far beyond mere improvements or new developments of alpine experiences.

In this pilot project, our executive team met up with students of our parent company Streicher in the Mountain Innovations Lab to exchange ideas. During the two-week workshop at the end of September, twelve students from different disciplines, including mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, economic psychology, bwl, civil engineering and artificial intelligence, were introduced to the world of innovative alpine experiences. It was our aim to generate as many different ideas for new product approaches as possible by bundling various skills.

What can be set in motion when the concentrated creative energy of students meets the experience of our professional product developers and project managers could already be seen in a short time.

The students benefitted from the exchange with our engineers and product experts, who brought lots of experience of their many years of professional practice to the table. The creative young minds in turn provided interdisciplinary thought-provoking impulses and impressed with innovative ideas. For each of the best four ideas new concepts were created, which were then presented to our group of experts.

Working on site, away from home office, was very refreshing for the participants. In addition to the core topics, current issues such as the handling of corona in the Alps were also discussed during the workshop.

It was a pleasant surprise for the participants of this extraordinary project, which was completely new territory for us as well, to learn that the results will by no means disappear in a drawer but will be systematically pursued and refined by us. These useful approaches may bring some more fun to the mountains in the near future.