Volvo and Hyper Island continue partnership to drive change

Partnering with future talent to lead change

Hyper Island is very proud to have Volvo Group as a main partner of our school. Since 2018, Volvo has enabled our organization and in particularly our Learning Partnerships team to pursue projects with ambitious challenges that have encouraged out students to enter into the stretch zone to ideate and develop concepts around complex topics, such as logistics planning, time and cost efficiency in construction transportation, sustainability for the transport ecosystem partners and more. This is truly a “real-world ready” experience for our students, and at the same time, a unique opportunity for Volvo Group to partner with future talent and drive change and prosperity for their company, as well as in their industry.

Through our partnership, we can lead the change together and not only stay relevant, but be in the forefront of innovation and sustainable development.

Learning from real-world experiences

Hyper Island’s student projects allow our students to get practical insights into advanced high-tech business environments and also work on important purpose-driven projects. These can include challenges such as lowering carbon footprint and how the industry can affect and lower environmental impact with innovative ideas. They also gain a deeper understanding of complex value chains, organizational structures, and industry ecosystems.

Each year, we do a big cross-program sprint as part of our learning collaboration that exists with Volvo Group. This is when we bring students from different programs with different skills and competences together to collaborate and work on a real-world business challenge. The sprint often kicks off the new cycle of our collaboration and the insights and ideas that are sprung from the sprint can then filter down into other projects throughout the school year. For our latest sprint, Volvo Group is looking for the next generation services and solutions to manage and reduce carbon footprint in goods transportation. For this specific sprint, we involved students from our Business Developer, Digital Creative and AI Business Consultant programs.

Hack Sprint – creating real-world solutions

Hack Sprint is a hackathon series initiated by Volvo Group Connected Solutions. It’s a way of working that brings together carefully selected teams to hack real-world solutions for real-world challenges with real-world impact.

The challenge was posed to our students: how can we support firms to monitor, prevent, reduce, or offset greenhouse gas emissions for goods transport with true transparency? When it comes to the ideation process, the students are not alone. Volvo Group is there throughout the process to lend their advice in response to the students’ perspectives.

This is what the winning team, Team 21, had to say:

Director Business Innovation & Foresight at Volvo Group, Hans Lind, also found the collaboration with Hyper Island students to be very valuable.

If the winning ideas are good enough, there’s every possibility that they can be taken further. Take last year’s winners for example, they were invited to pitch their idea to the Innovation Council at Volvo. Their idea got funded, and a Volvo team worked on refining the idea. It has since contributed to a solution that is now being tested with users and customers.

Watch a film about our previous Hack Sprint with Volvo Group

 

A new energy brought by Hyper Island students

format_quote

“The Volvo team gets infused by the energy shown by the students from Hyper Island,” continues Hans Lind. “Nowadays, we try to connect the partnership even more over the year to the Hack Sprint that becomes the starting point for collaboration. Later, we can have smaller projects with a longer duration to deep dive into business models or UX designs. This creates a flow between Volvo and Hyper Island, almost like breathing. And it renders great output too!”

Head of Learning Partnerships at Hyper Island, Pernilla Hallberg has witnessed the true value of the partnership for both the collaborating company and Hyper Island students.

format_quote

“Seeing that the work and the ideas from our students actually have a true impact is so rewarding and I couldn’t be prouder! Each year, the winning team from the Sprint gets to pitch for a wider Volvo Group audience through their Edge Talk format. They also get the opportunity to bring their idea to the Volvo Innovation Council, which then determines potential next steps for development and implementation. It’s truly a unique real-world ready experience for the students and, at the same, all participants can evolve and learn from each other,” she says.