University of Liechtenstein wins Swiss final again at Innovation Competition

Shaho Alaee, Christian Huck, Maria Galitskaia, Jan-Peter Kucklick and Harry Tobias Riegger convinced the jury — just like their colleagues the year before — in the regional final of the Accenture CIC in Zurich with their innovative and professional solution “Cownect – Farming of the future”. The University of Liechtenstein team prevailed against othersfrom the University of St. Gallen, ETH Zurich and the University of Bern. In July, the students will get the opportunity to prove their skills again in the big final in Frankfurt/Main and will compete against the best groups from Germany and Austria. Last year, the team “Promena“ of the University of Liechtenstein won with the project “Smart Waste Management“ at the international Accenture CIC in Kronberg in Frankfurt/Main.

The Accenture CIC is a competition, where the renowned consulting company asks student teams from Germany, Austria and Switzerland in cooperation with their universities to work on a case study and present the results in a multilevel competition. From idea finding to prototypical implementation to presenting in front of a top-class jury, the teams run through all phases of a project. This year, the challenge is all about digital technologies, that can change our life sustainably. The students need to develop an innovative concept about the “workplace of the future“. The winning team of the University of Liechtenstein developed with the project “Cownect“ an idea on how “Farming of the future“ could look like, where for example collars measure the temperature and pulse of cows and thereby tell the farmer automatically the cows’ state of health – this could mean enormous time savings for daily farming operations.

Dr. Theresa Schmiedel, Assistant Professor at the Hilti Chair of Business Process Management and Supervisor of the module Innovation Lab II in the master’s programme Information Systems was impressed by the performance of the winning group: „In our study programme’s practice-oriented seminars, we specifically promote the ability to develop innovative and IT-based solutions for the real world. Cownect is a perfect example on how the workplace of the future could look like and how digital technologies can help us to make our lives as simple as possible.”