To promote the creativity and innovation of university students by giving them the opportunity to face real world challenges. This is the goal of the "Yes, we are innovation" project, promoted by Fundación Universidad de Oviedo in collaboration with the Ayuntamiento de Oviedo in which EDP participated during the months of October and November.

In this networking platform, connecting the business world with academia, EDP, together with Alsa, Capsa, EDP, Liberbank and Seresco, proposed different challenges to the participants, originated in their respective business environments. 11 teams of young people worked on different business challenges.

In the case of EDP, 5 challenges were worked upon: "Promoting the electric vehicle in Oviedo", "Disruptive communication", "Digital transformation of employees", "Information on electricity consumption" and "Digital customer". Of these five, two went to the semifinal.

Semi-finalist projects

The students (and interns of Fundación EDP) Krystel Araneda and Rosa Lara, from the headquarters in Oviedo, together with María Burgos and Elena Fueyo, were in charge of working on the challenge "Promoting the electric vehicle in Oviedo". Their proposals revolved around promoting sustainable mobility through demonstrative sessions of the operation of an electric car or the integration of parking and recharging services in an app.

The other semifinalist team was formed by the students Kylliam Alfaraz, Irene Arellano, Coral Fernandez and Miguel Navarro. They focused on proposing measures in pursuit of the digitization of employees. Workshops on cloud tools, an autonomous record of working hours or learning through gamification were some of them.

"Learning by doing"

Both the teams that worked on the EDP challenges, as well as those of the other companies, had an accompaniment in the process by mentors and facilitators who guided their process. In the case of EDP, Luis Santos, head of Innovation, Enrique Menéndez, responsible for innovation projects, Javier Izquierdo, head of Sustainable Mobility, Manuel Marcos Rodríguez, director of Digital Processes and Manuel Fernández of Digital Processes were appointed tutors to share their knowledge with the young students. Finally, the winning team of this edition were the authors of the idea of creating a social network for Liberbank. However, each of the 63 participants in this first edition of the program put into practice "learning by doing", that is, a practical methodology of learning that will be useful in their professional future.