Technical University of Denmark students create innovative solutions at Sony
Victoria Strauss Søgaard, Nicolai Casper Raith Hansen, and Magnus Hørlyk Friis know the workflows of the Sony Startup Acceleration Program, the innovation department at the company’s Nordic headquarters in Lund, better than most. Victoria and Nicolai are doing their BEng project in close collaboration with the company, while Magnus has been doing an internship at Sony together with Nicolai.
The competences they have acquired during their Process and Innovation study programme, which they will graduate from this summer, enable them to solve complex innovation-related problems at Sony. The purpose of Nicolai and Victoria’s project includes improving the internal consultancy services in the company, while Magnus and Nicolai have, for instance, been responsible for a workshop on innovation attended by most of SONY’s departments worldwide.
“Process and Innovation is one-third anthropology, one-third business, and one-third engineering. It’s about talking to people, identifying a problem, and solving it in the right way, and that’s where we come in,” Magnus explains.
Nicolai continues:
“We’re the glue between the engineers and the business people because we have the needed insight into the world of engineering combined with business understanding. Victoria, Magnus, and I also have a start-up together with three other DTU students alongside our studies, and this has made Sony particularly interested in us. In fact, right from the start of our internship, Magnus and I were able to draw on specific experiences with processes and innovation from our own entrepreneurial adventure.”
Generalists in a specialist world
The BEng programme in Process and Innovation takes 3½ years, but Victoria, Magnus, and Nicolai have chosen to extend their study programme by one semester, so they have time to develop their start-up while writing their final projects. According to Victoria, this particular study programme is very special because it makes you a generalist while allowing you to specialize, if that is what you want.
“We call ourselves generalists in a specialist world, and we work a lot with team dynamics. Process and Innovation is generally a broad study programme, but it also gives students the opportunity to specialize during their studies, for example by focusing on sustainability, software, or project management,” she explains.
Nicolai and Victoria have just begun their final project, and, for Victoria, their purpose is quite clear.
“It’s about improving the internal consultancy services in the company to create the greatest possible value for Sony,” she concludes.
International collaboration
DTU collaborates with a large number of companies to give students the best possible opportunities to find the internship that is just right for them. One of these companies is Sony, which offers BEng students internships and gives them the opportunity to write their final BEng project in collaboration with the company.
Associate Professor Torben Hede has long experience with innovation from private companies, including Sony, and it was obvious for him to establish a collaboration with the large Japanese company on behalf of DTU.
“The collaboration gives the students the opportunity to try their hand at innovation in a large international company, where students can do an internship, write their BEng project, or solve problems for the company in connection with Innovation Pilot, which is an interdisciplinary project course that all BEng students have to complete,” explains Torben Hede.
Olle Landegren, who works with internal and external innovation in the Sony Startup Acceleration Program department, is also enthusiastic about the collaboration and its educational benefits for both the students and the company.
“We want to learn more about how to create new companies, and we’ve therefore chosen to collaborate with DTU and the start-up industry, among others. We also want to be inspired and challenge the students with real problems that they learn a lot from solving, and where we can subsequently use their results to improve our workflows, for example,” he explains.