Ulysses Digital Student Competition

Anita Zehrer : The idea for the "Ulysses Digital Student Competition on Family Businesses" was developed in cooperation with our project partners. We have already successfully worked on projects with them in the past as part of Erasmus+. With the "Ulysses Digital Student Competition on Family Businesses", we wanted to address current trends that are becoming increasingly important in today's working world, such as dealing with digital learning and interaction environments and the practical teaching of entrepreneurial skills. As family businesses make up a large part of the economic landscape in different EU countries, they provide the ideal context to address real-world business issues.

If we look to other countries, such as America, such competitions for students are already well established. They offer the opportunity to test theoretical knowledge on real-life case studies. In Europe, on the other hand, there are hardly any such competitions to date. Our aim with Ulysses is therefore to create an exemplary European pilot initiative.

Anita Zehrer: The "Ulysses Digital Student Competition on Family Businesses" is an Erasmus+ project. This means that the project is funded by the EU. The aim of the funding is to establish better networking within the EU. The project consortium for the "Ulysses Digital Student Competition on Family Businesses" consists of four partner universities and two SMEs. In addition to the Family Business Center at MCI The Entrepreneurial School ®, these include the University of Szeged, the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, the University of Vienna, Univations Gmbh and the agency fundus Gmbh. Together, the partners have excellent experience and expertise in the fields of education, entrepreneurship, communication and project management.

Anita Zehrer: The project is aimed at students from European universities who develop solution strategies for real-life case studies from regionally based family businesses. Of course, the participating students benefit greatly from the format, as the use of modern tools and real-life challenges are particularly important here. Taking part in our competition offers them a hands-on learning experience beyond conventional educational contexts.

In addition, the project also supports lecturers in teaching entrepreneurial education in a practical way. A digital interaction platform is being designed specifically for the Ulysses competition, which can be used free of charge by lecturers as part of the competition.

The project naturally also offers added value for the participating family businesses, which benefit from the solutions proposed by the student case studies. They can also establish contacts with future graduates and specialists in the course of the competition. We naturally help the participating family businesses to develop the case studies and rely on established scientific methods to collect and process all relevant information. The case study for the competition is presented anonymously so that students who may already know the company do not have an advantage and can therefore approach the topic freely and develop innovative solutions.

Anita Zehrer: Students from all European universities can take part in the "Ulysses Digital Student Competition on Family Businesses". In the current times, which are characterized by social isolation, students have often only had limited opportunities to make new contacts. International exchange and international cooperation in particular have been neglected. In our competition, students compete in teams of four students each and can thus work together in an international group on the case studies. Students who already have three other fellow students with whom they would like to form a team can register directly as a team. However, it is absolutely not necessary or desired that the teams are already fixed at the time of registration. After registering, students have the opportunity to get in touch with other participants and form teams. In this way, we would like to encourage international collaboration and offer students the opportunity to get in touch and work together with students from other universities. As the competition will take place online, international teams will not be at a disadvantage in their collaboration or communication.

Anita Zehrer: The competition will take place in spring 2023. To stay up to date, everyone can either find out more independently on the official project website or register directly for our newsletter.

Registration for students will be possible in the coming winter semester 2022/23 and will of course be easy to complete online.

Anita Zehrer: All family businesses that are facing a specific challenge and are interested in exploring ideas for solution strategies can apply to us. The aim of the competition is for the teams of students to develop solutions for the case studies of the participating family businesses. If the participating family businesses are interested, they can be part of the jury and compete for the different ideas.

Registration for family businesses is very easy via our email address: familienunternehmen@mci.edu.