Alexandra Federer, long-standing external lecturer for business planning and Manfred J. Schieber were invited to evaluate the business plans of the Master’s students of the study program “Health Assisting Engineering” at FH Campus Wien as jury members.
While the students were able to present feasible ideas and already functional prototypes, the analysis of the market potential and the possibilities for practical implementation could still be improved. Therefore, a planned cooperation aims to bundle the strengths of both universities of applied sciences: on the one hand, technical solutions in the area of medical technology, and on the other hand business knowledge and the entrepreneurial perspective. Therefore, the pitch of this years’ students is planned to become the start of an interdisciplinary work with regards to the business ideas. Provided that the student developers agree with a further adaption of their ideas, our Bachelor’s students from the study program Management & Entrepreneurship will further work on the ideas during the module “Business Planning”. Thereby, they will work on the business model and analyze whether the prototypes are suitable for serial production and distribution in a competitive market.
Subsequent discussions with the students after the pitches at FH Campus Wien showed that the planned cooperation is not only aspired by the heads of the study programs involved, but also by the students themselves. Some of the students for instance can imagine that our Bachelor’s students would also do further work on ideas developed outside of the event, such as ideas for new medical products developed for their Master’s theses.