Participants of this course will join heterogeneous student groups to work on a business solution for a real-world managerial issue provided by an industry partner. The basic idea behind the course concept is similar to a "hackathon" (a combination of the words "hack" and "marathon", originally used in the software industry for a software development competition).

Our industry partner (an Austrian-based world market leading company) will be announced and introduced in the first course session. The competing student groups are recruited as a mix of TU and WU Vienna students. To stimuate out-of-the-box thinking, creative discussions, and innovative solutions to management problems in a B2B industry, we try to bring together a diversity in educational background and specializations. Thus, we aim to have students from multiple WU MSc programs (such as, CEMS, Marketing, SCM, SIMC, ...) in the hackathon groups.

Students will present and defend their findings in a competitive setting at the annual congress “World Market Leaders in Austria”, with representatives of the sponsoring partners and many board level business leaders being in the audience.

Click here for more information on the last years' TU-WU-hackathon

After completing this course students will be able to ...

• structure complex, real-world business problems in a systematic way, derive conclusions and recommendations for management practice
• celebrate the benefits and challenges of working together in group settings with heterogeneous educational background
• critically evaluate their experience with out-of-the box thinking and deriving business solutions under time-pressure
• prepare professional presentations (elevator-pitch) and perform at their best in competitive business settings

The course utilizes a mix of introductory presentations, class discussions, and student presentations. The instructor will provide students with additional advice, individual and/or group coaching sessions, and feedback. Active participation is crucial for a favorable outcome of this course.

Student evaluation and grading will be based on the following components:

(1) Quality of group performance at the conference (elevator-pitch): 30%

(2) Quality and originality of the proposed concept / approach to the business challenge (to be submitted at the conference): 40%

(3) Post reflection paper: Students are supposed to write a paper, which summarizes their experience, learnings, and key-takeaways from the challenge; the paper should not be longer than 10 double spaced pages and is due one week after the conference (30%)

While the first two components are group evaluations, the third component is individual.