HP and WWF have joined forces to support a Sustainable Innovation Award which was launched by Ashridge Business School and the European Academy of Business in Society(EABIS) earlier this month.
The award has been designed to generate the best ideas from MBA and other post-graduate students across Europe, the Middle East and Africa on how organisations can create value from the shift to a low-carbon economy. The theme of the award – Sustainable Innovation – challenges students to find new ideas for business innovation, product and service innovation or process innovation.
Generating thought-provoking essays
This is the ninth time that Ashridge Business School has launched an award with the aim of generating the most thought-provoking essays from MBA students. On this occasion, it is open to full or part-time students on any MBA programme available in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) during the academic year of 2008/9. It is also available to MBA students at any one of EABIS’ member institutions outside the EMEA region as well as to students on MBA or Masters-level postgraduate programmes at HP linked universities.
Entries for the award can range across industry sectors and geographic regions. They will be judged, amongst other things, according to originality and insight, depth of analysis, use of real-life examples, relevance to modern organisations and robustness of conclusions drawn.
Students are required to submit their essays of no more than 3,000 words, together with an executive summary online. They have until 2nd March next year to get their entries in and the winners will be announced in the summer of 2009.
Distinguished judges
The judging panel comprises a distinguished panel of representatives from academia, corporations and NGOs as well as the supporting organisations themselves. Panelists include Sir Paul Judge, Benefactor of the Judge Institute at Cambridge University, Gabriele Zedlmayer, Vice President Corporate Marketing and Global Citizenship at HP EMEA, Dennis Pamlin, Global Policy Advisor at WWF and Viscount Etienne Davignon, Chair of the European Academy of Business in Society and Vice-Chair, Suez-Tractebel. The winner will receive €7,000 plus a six-month mentorship with HP management. The first runner-up will receive €5,000 and the second runner-up will receive a prize worth €3,000. All winners will receive career advice from Spencer Stuart, the global executive search consultants.
Need for innovation
Gabriele Zedlmayer, Vice President Corporate Marketing and Global Citizenship HP EMEA said: “Climate change is playing an increasing role in business competition and the challenge lies in finding big solutions to ensure long-term reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It is up to businesses of every size to transform the global infrastructure and to create a low-carbon economy. We need strong innovation by tomorrow’s leaders to accomplish this, which is why we are keen to support this award.
”Our support for this award is also a good opportunity for us to expand our partnership with WWF as it highlights our collaborative climate work to the academic world. HP and WWF have been working hard across EMEA to investigate how the use of ICT solutions can help to reduce CO2 emissions across different parts of the economy. So our work is extremely relevant in this case.”
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