Looking 75 years to the future: Reimagining Business & Economics

The year 2023 marked the 75th anniversary of the School of Business and Economics (SBE) at Vrije Universiteit. The School’s vision of business and economics in society can only continue to grow and flourish with the involvement of our its students, staff, and teachers.

For the Looking 75 years to the future: Reimagining Business & Economics We invited SBE students, faculty, staff members and alumni to join forces to reimagine a more sustainable and impactful future. We welcomed ideas that bring to life ‘business and economics in society’ in creative and innovative ways to be showcased at the Impact Showroom to an audience of impact experts, investors, including SBE alumni and stakeholders. An esteemed jury selected four winning ideas to receive support for the implementation or development.

Challenge champions

School of Business and Economics

In the autumn of 1948, the first cohort of students arrived at the then Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences in the Koningslaan in Amsterdam. By now, 75 years further down the line, it is called the School of Business ad Economics. In these 75 years, much has changed, but in the core the School is still what it was back then – a community close to society.

How can we have an impact?

Impact Lab encouraged the VU community to reimagine the future of Business and Economics, submit their innovative ideas on the platform and present them live at the SBE Impact Showroom to celebrate the vision of ‘science with purpose’.

Winning ideators and their ideas

The Impact Showroom, commemorating the 75th anniversary of VU School of Business and Economics, convened the SBE community on November 22nd. Students, staff, teachers and alumni were invited to presented and discuss their ideas for impactful business and economics. An esteemed jury, consisting of Andrew Spitz, Christina Caljé, and Tima Bansal, selected three winning ideas. The teams that submitted these ideas received an award and will be supported with the further development and implementation of their idea. The audience selected another winner for the ‘Crowd’s Choice Award’.

Impact and Inspiration Award

The Impact and Inspiration Award went to Tom Tetteroo for the idea to build a platform that connects people to do collective challenges by making them fun & easy: CollAction. Tom Tetteroo explains: ‘The Collective Action Problem, the phenomenon that people are reluctant to do something for a collective cause because they mainly feel a personal disadvantage, can be solved with an online environment. By cleverly dealing with social interactions, while showing that you can indeed make an impact with your group of friends, we can make sustainable action attractive. Ultimately, with CollAction, we hope to become the app in the Netherlands that people think of when they want to make their daily lives more

Education Award

The Education Award went to associate professor Sieweke, J. (Jost) for the idea AI in Education. His course on crisis leadership in the VU Executive MBA program formed the inspiration for his idea. Jost Sieweke: ‘After teaching the course for the first time in 2022, I realized that teaching crisis leadership requires students to actually experience a crisis. I now aim to create highly realistic experiential learning opportunities for students to improve the effectiveness of my courses. For instance, in my ‘Leading through Crisis and Uncertainty’ course in the Executive MBA, I developed a live simulation in which students worked on a real-life crisis for about 3 hours and were confronted with new information and unexpected developments. In contrast to most computer simulations, students did not have to choose between certain options, but they could make decisions in a group, and I flexibly reacted to their decisions (with the support of AI tools such as Chat GPT).’

Collaboration Award

he Collaboration Award went to student Crolla, R.S. (Rijk) for the idea Teambuilding done Better. With corporate team events, Rijk and his team create real functional prosthetic hands for people in Africa, completely free of charge for the recipients. Rijk Crolla: ‘We believe that companies can do better than go laser game, or do some icebreakers. Research shows the benefits of combining team building with real tangible social impact. That’s exactly what we do. In our events, a team will create real functional prosthetic hands for people in Africa. For these people, this is completely free of charge. By doing so, we combine corporate team building with real impact, for both the hand recipients and the teams participating.’

Crowd’s Choice Award

The Crowd’s Choice Award went to Groot, B.M. de (Bas) and Groot, M.B.T. de (Maarten) for the idea Unlocking the Power of Impact Transparency. Bas de Groot: ‘We both work for a foundation that is developing an advanced impact measurement tool based entirely on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.’ A better tool to measure impact is much needed, according to De Groot. ‘Less than 2.5% of the total global assets under management go to impact companies. That only a shocking 2.5% are invested with impact is because the asset management industry does not have access to a uniform standard for measuring impact. Although interest is growing, we believe developments are not moving fast enough.’

Rewards

The SBE award

The winners received recognition and a trophy award from the VU School of Business and Economics.

Jury coffee hour

Each winner was awarded a brainstorming coffee hour with one of the jury members.

Implementation support

Winners will receive support for the implementation or development of their ideas.

Shared ideas

From an application that assists customers in developing more sustainable shopping habits to a platform that enables SBE students to consult on societal projects: there was a wide variety of ideas, with 16 in total submitted for the challenge.