Students boost innovation

Together with LINAK Denmark A/S the Danish Technological Institute launched a big innovation competition in September 2007 for young students who consider themselves budding inventors. The collaboration was initiated in 2006 as a result of a similar competition. The Institute’s contribution includes planning, contacting participants and acting as an impartial party in the competition’s secretariat.

The competition is split into two, one for university students and one for production technologists. The challenge consists of finding new innovative applications for electrical actuator technology in the products of tomorrow. The ideas are assessed among other things on how innovative they are and how far they represent a new way of thinking.

- Innovation is trendy. There is talk of idea development everywhere – but the fact is that we in Denmark are simply not good enough at innovation, says Business Development Manager Claus Rode from LINAK Denmark A/S. He believes that a number of initiatives still need to be put in place if Denmark is to compete on a global scale. First and foremost we need to ensure that idea development and innovation become a natural part of the day to day thinking at educational institutes, both in the teaching and in the exams. Students have to be trained to use innovation as a tool when they meet an apparently unsolvable problem.

- With this competition we aim to focus on the fact that there is a wealth of untapped potential in young people, who should be challenged to think in untraditional and creative ways already before they enter the job market, says Claus Rode.

There was great interest in the competition with 70 students sending in their ideas. The winners of the competition were announced on 28th February 2008. The main prize was an innovation trip to China which was won by Brian Pjedsted for his invention X-Ramp – an electrical stairway ramp that wheelchair users can activate and fold out themselves. Henrik Fensmark Hansen and Morten Drachmann also won a trip to China.