WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — AACSB International (AACSB), the world’s largest business education alliance, has chosen a Purdue initiative among 26 programs highlighted in its annual Innovations That Inspire member spotlight program.
Second-year students from the Integrated Business and Engineering program in the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business combined with senior-level Industrial Design students from the College of Liberal Arts to take part in an innovation hackathon. With corporate partner dormakaba, a global provider of access control and security solutions, students participated in a competition to create solutions for helping people with physical disabilities achieve easier independent building access.
Now in its ninth year, the Innovations That Inspire initiative recognizes global institutions that serve as champions of change in business education. The schools are leveraging innovation to enable equitable access, empower problem-solvers, design timely curricula and credentials, deploy adaptive learning methods, create new knowledge, and develop societal impact leaders.
“In a world facing social, economic, and technological challenges, business schools are innovating to develop powerful solutions,” says Lily Bi, AACSB president and CEO. “Purdue’s hackathon exemplifies the unique ways that business schools create value and impact for their stakeholders. Through bold leadership and innovation, the Daniels School of Business is contributing to a better world, demonstrating the important role business schools play in our society.”
During the competition, students engaged in hands-on empathy research, bodystorming (simulation in a physical environment), affinity mapping, cardboard prototyping, and role-playing. Industrial Design students contributed the necessary design skills, while the business school students investigated cost effectiveness, competitors’ products, marketing, and other issues.
Justin Crotzer, senior vice president of global access hardware solutions product development at dormakaba, led his company’s involvement in the event.
“It gives us the ability as a business to understand more about what Purdue is doing to develop its programs and students and to learn how to partner with the university in a positive way,” Crotzer says. “We also benefit from the boundless creativity of the students and the unique solutions they develop by thinking outside the box.”
AACSB, short for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, was founded in 1916 to provide accreditation to business schools. More examples of AACSB’s Innovations That Inspire are available at aacsb.edu/innovations-that-inspire.
Writer: Tim Newton
Source: AACSB International (MediaRelations@aacsb.edu)
