Students and Alumni Participate in the 2022 Edition of the IE Climathon

IE Business School students and alumni participated in the 2022 edition of the IE Climathon, a Q&A discussion on sustainability with industry professionals from AWS to analyze and present a creative solution to a related prompt.

A total of 35 students and alumni, drawing largely from IEU Labs, participated in the hackathon-styled event, in which teams competed to come up with solutions.

Students were asked to design a communication campaign that effectively communicates AWS’s new Zero Net Carbon region in Spain. Through the AWS console, customers within the region will be able to access relevant sustainability KPIs for their respective AWS-related infrastructure and track their level of sustainability.

The event, organized by the Marketing Lab, started with a round table where two AWS professionals gave background on the topic and explained the challenge. Students had the opportunity to ask questions during the roundtable and subsequently were given 30 minutes to develop their ideas.

The challenge consisted in presenting a communication campaign for AWS’s sustainable developments in Spain. The students were divided into 12 teams which had to present their ideas in under 5 minutes. The panel of judges evaluated each presentation based on effectivity, feasibility, innovation, and presentation and two winning teams were selected.

“I think events like these are very important for the IE Community as it brings students and alumni closer together and gives them a chance to look at important, current issues from different perspectives, giving them a new look at certain problems and potentially helping them develop new ideas.”
Yannik Zimmermann

“Additionally, attendees are able to network with industry professionals, alumni, and students from other programs, possibly helping them find a job or business partners for the future,” said Yannik Zimmermann, one of the student organizers of the event.

Students were able to put into practice the skills and knowledge they have gained in class as well as in the IEU Labs. “During the Strategy Lab I learned that when marketing a novel and relatively unknown technology to customers, it is crucial to pick the right target group to market to, as well as inform them about the product, whilst eliminating the ambiguity of the 'unknown'. It is important to include in-depth information without drowning the potential customer in excess technicalities. This is one of the key learnings I applied in the Climathon competition,” said Esra Püren San, a BBA BIR student in one of the winning teams.

Marie Pascale Oliger, a BBA student in one of the two winning teams, said – for her– the three main benefits of participating in IE-organized events like the Climathon are “networking with professionals and students, the chance to put your knowledge into practice by solving a real case challenge and presenting your solutions to professionals, and getting to know a company that interests you.”