Every Idea Comes with a Business Opportunity

At the moovel lab we frequently work with universities and design schools to get new ideas and inspiration from smart students. With our latest workshop we were branching out into new terrain. It is crucial for us, as it is for every creative endeavour, to experience how other departments work and adapt their approaches to our (mobility) needs.

This applies especially to the business sector. None of our moovel lab members are deep into business model innovation. Despite this lack we were very happy when the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland approached us to collaborate. That is exactly what was missing in our roster: rethinking our business around a clearly defined customer need and, by turning it upside down, creating not only value proposition but also encountering new possibilities for the lab.

Creating the Brief

The business model innovation experts from our Mergers & Acquisitions department were easily convinced and enthusiastic to participate. Together we worked on a brief and initiated adequate feedback sessions for the students majoring in business administration and economics. We wanted them to come up with innovative business models and to investigate case studies.

The first case study concerned mass mobility solutions in developing countries. Many populations today face rapid urbanisation with a lack of sufficient infrastructure. There is a high demand for mobility solutions, yet with limited governmental and passenger budgets, while the number of car owners is at present very low. At the same time the number of smartphone owners has greatly increased.

As a task the students were asked to develop innovative and cost-efficient mobility services that could tackle these issues and simultaneously cater for the rapidly increasing mobility needs of the population. Their focus was supposed to be on the market and ramp-up, to define key stakeholders and value propositions.

The second case study was about data monetisation, using moovel as an example. As a mobility platform, moovel has access to many data sets and stakeholders. The service collaborates with municipalities and states and wants to branch out even further internationally. The challenge the students were faced with was that, despite its existing data points, moovel doesn’t make the most of its large data pool yet. However, this data is increasingly becoming critical for business success. In order to create better services it is essential to accurately utilise existing data sources, while at the same time complying with data protection laws.

Theory Meets Practice: Business Model Navigator in Action

It was a great opportunity for the students to draw from the lectures they had attended at St. Gallen’s Institute of Technology Management. The institute focuses on research in innovation management by exploring patterns of innovation.

The students were asked to apply the St. Gallen Business Model Navigator to identity patterns and solutions for moovel. They were aided by researchers at the institute, Assistant Professor Karolin Frankenberger and Research Associate Roman Sauer. The data science expertise of our moovel team and our knowledge of app development helped the students to develop their ideas to a concept stage.

Great Ideas in the Making

We are excited to introduce you to the students’ multifaceted results, ranging from gamification to what moovel’s data analysis can reveal about the real estate market! One approach was tackling mobility solutions in Bangalore. Students Anthony Dharan, Julien Oppliger and Nahua Kang worked on a business model for moovel. They highlighted the app’s advantage of combining intermodal transport.

Another presentation by Fabrice Gürmann, Julian Bader and Moritz Merz dealt with the topic of data monetisation. They developed several gamification concepts to turn the moovel app into a playful platform. For example, users receive points when buying a travel ticket through the app. Another scenario used the app to educate users about their CO2 emissions.

Their concepts lead to fruitful discussions among our team. We even talked about the possibility of bringing some of these interesting results to life… We will definitely keep their concepts in mind for further exploration. A big thanks to the students of University of St. Gallen!