EADA Business School has started new initiative this year – The MiM Innovation Challenge. It is a 3-day competition between Master in Management participants, who work in teams to produce disruptive innovation business ideas. Teams follow a specific methodology and also get coached all along by successful entrepreneurs and mentors. Teams progress through rounds by successfully pitching their ideas and convincing a panel of experts.
During these rounds, they listen to Innovation Stories delivered by Innovators and this year Apium Academy got invited to this challenge to share it’s innovation business model.

We believe that this initiative is great as sharing real experiences is what makes people learn and drive conclusions. The innovation and startups scene in general is not as sunny as it may seem, actually 42% of startups fail because there is simply no real market need. And through the MiM Innovation Challenge, participants:

• focus on the importance of finding/discovering problems users and clients have, to then ideate solutions.
• understand the concept of Disruptive Innovation and develop a related mindset.
• put in practise key tools and resources linked to disruptive innovation.
• work in a diverse team and under pressure, with a limited amount of time and resources.
• gain confidence and skills in pitching ideas in a convincing and influential way.

Ekaterina Novoseltseva – CMO at Apium Academy, together with other invited innovators like Mariano Najles – CEO at Las Muns, Sven Huber – Founder & CEO at Boolino, Marc Tarragó – Regional Export Director at Miguel Torres and others shared their insights and best practises, focusing on: what was the problem and pain to solve, what was the suggested solution, what was the value proposition, what did the first MVP (Minimum Viable Product) look like, etc.

Innovation Challenge: Apium Academy Case Study

Well, let’s go over these questions step by step:

1. How would you define the innovative disruption?

Actually, Apium Academy agrees with Mr Christensen who coined this “idea” that innovative disruption or disruptive innovation is an innovation that transforms an existing market or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability where complications and high cost are the status quo.
In other words, disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market, displacing established market-leading firms, products, services and alliances.

2. What is Apium Academy?

Apium Academy offers high-quality tailor-made software development courses focusing on the most effective practices for the current project, working software and practical solutions for current issues. It is for developers who want to grow professionally and for companies that want to train their teams to build working software and achieve high scalability and performance.

It offers mid-high level courses and workshops by leading software developers, who come from all over the world to share their knowledge and tools. All sessions offer practical, hands-on experience, tackling current issues and finding optimized solutions following best practices, that students and companies can implement right away.

3. What was the problem that Apium Academy has solved?

There was and there is a huge gap in the market: the demand for high-quality software developers is much greater than the supply. And startups, as well as big companies, struggle to find IT talents to implement their digital business strategies. There are boot camps like Ironhack and Ubiqum, but their graduates can’t start working for companies immediately, they first need to do an internship, work for several months or years and only then have a sufficient level to develop high-quality software. And companies need personalized training for their internal teams and mid-senior developers want to grow professionally as well but don’t have campuses that would offer mid-high level presencial practical courses.

Apium Academy is for experienced developers who want to grow and for companies that want to train their teams to build working software and achieve high scalability and performance.

Other than that, it is important to highlight that Apium Academy offers mid-high level courses and workshops by leading software developers, who come from different countries to share their experience. All sessions offer practical, hands-on experience, tackling current issues and finding optimized solutions following best practices, that students and companies can implement the acquired knowledge right away.
Basically, Apium Academy doesn’t offer standardized materials, it offers taylor made classes that solve current issues of the software market.

4. What was the solution?

• Tailor-made trainings for companies
• Personalized courses for developers
• Workshops by leading experts in the industry
• Space for software development community

5. What was the value proposition?

• Be part of a software development community that wants to grow professionally
• High-quality practical trainings that solve current issues
• Apium Academy Alumni benefits

6. What did the first MVP (Minimum Viable Product) look like?

First practical Frontend development course for mid level developers ( 8 sessions, 1,5 hours each, 10 people, 363 euros/course/attendee )

7. What about being disruptive in the training field?

Developers and companies love Apium Academy training. There are numerous of testimonials from companies like: Wallapop, DocPlanner, Oracle, SEOCOM, Talent Clue, Tiendeo, Allianz, EY, Mango, Mascoteros, Opentrends, Cornerjob, Ofertia, Europcar, etc. and all of them point out on personalization and current issues coverage.

Btw, last workshop of the year takes place 10th and 11th of December and it will be about Continuous Delivery, to know more, click here!