eSTUDENT Activities for Better Interaction with Businesses

Case Study Competition, a project of the student association eSTUDENT, is a competition in solving real business cases on a given topic.  This year's competition attracted sixteen leading Croatian companies, including Ericsson Nikola Tesla, with the topic „Interaction of people and machines in a networked society – digital inclusion “.  Darko Huljenić, PhD, presented the awards to the best teams at the closing ceremony.

Case Study Competition, a project of the student association eSTUDENT is a competition in solving real business cases aimed at students with different spheres of interest. Students from Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro are eligible to compete.  Teams of two to four persons can apply for a maximum of two business cases.

The first competition was held in 2004, at the initiative of Miroslav Ante Omazić, PhD, from the Faculty of Economics and Business, with the aim to intensify the interaction between students and businesses. The competition is interesting because applicants are teams on the one hand, and businesses on the other, which fuels competition in setting ever more interesting and motivational business cases.

This year's competition attracted sixteen leading Croatian companies, including Ericsson Nikola Tesla with the topic „Interaction of people and machines in a networked society – digital inclusion“.
Finalists for each topic were selected after several rounds of team and project presentations in front of the topic proponent company panel, and the winners were presented at the closing ceremony held in Blitz Cinestar in Zagreb.  The finalists competed for valuable references and certificates as well as for money rewards in the amounts of HRK 10,000, HRK 5,000 and HRK 3,000.

Darko Huljenić, PhD, chaired Ericsson Nikola Tesla’s panel that selected seven finalist teams. The panel was amazed by the freshness of ideas, analytical skills and creativity in solving business cases that the finalists demonstrated. Projects that stood out in terms of quality were the project that proposed digital communication aids, the greatest value of which was the assessment questionnaire on user needs and preferences in technology use, and the ICT supported social inclusion project for people with cerebral palsy.

The best solution and the complete analysis of the application potentials were done by students with the business case Technology for Good – Smart Agriculture.  Its authors are Drago Crnjac, student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, and Zrinka Mihaljević, student at the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb, who were the winners in our case.  Car GO, whose authors are Viktor Slavić and Leonardo Lovričić, students at the Faculty of Economics in Rijeka, was ranked second, and the third place was won by the Agriculture Sensory Surveillance System, authored by Maja Majdak, student at the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb, Ivan Ljubičić-Dedić, student at the Polytechnic of Zagreb, and Jakob Vukalović, student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing.  The members of the two top ranking teams were invited to participate in this year’s Summer Camp. The first team will have the opportunity to implement its idea which we plan to incorporate into our M2M laboratory, and the second was invited to participate in economic analyses of interest to our company.  

Case Study Competition is a part of the good cooperation between Ericsson Nikola Tesla and the student association eSTUDENT. Recently, the company has also participated in the project “A visit to the future place of work” in which it introduced a group of students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Economics and Business to the company’s activities and the way of working.

Communications Ericsson Nikola Tesla