24 hours instead of 42 kilometres: Innovation Marathon in Alpbach

Working 24 hours non-stop on real-life problems set by companies and proving the power of innovation at the Alpbach Technology Symposium. The 3rd TU Austria Innovation Marathon presented 40 students with a "physical" challenge. Eight companies presented 40 selected Alpbach Scholarship holders with practical problems for which they had to develop solutions and prototypes in teams. Together with the organisational team of TU Austria - the association of the three Austrian technical universities comprising TU Graz, TU Wien and the University of Leoben, the corporate partners presented real-life challenges as assignments. This year, the following were included: Students turned over ideas, discussed solution approaches and worked out concepts in specially prepared work rooms for one day and one night. Though there were no beds, there were comfortable bean bags, healthy snacks, ample flip charts, colourful sticky notes and various materials to aid the spontaneous construction of prototypes. 1,000 ideas - one solution - Over 1,000 ideas were conceived, eight of them were elaborated in detail, and exactly 24 hours after the starting shot were clearly presented to the corporate partners and guests today, Friday.