Learning by doing, that's what Tio is all about! Tio's project weeks are part of this practice-oriented education. During these weeks, students roll up their sleeves and apply their knowledge in practice. They advise companies, set up pop-up restaurants and get started with real criminal cases. During the online kick-off today, the assignments and clients for this week were announced.
Event Week: connect the client
Sjoerd Weikamp, chief editor and co-owner of event platform Eventbranche.nl, explains the case to the Hotel and Event Management students of the Event Week. Eventbranche has two target audiences: event professionals and customers. The first group is very connected to the platform, but for the second group, there’s room for improvement. The case for the students: present your ideas about what Eventbranche should do to make their customers more connected to the platform. Weikamp: "I've worked with Tio students before, so I expect a lot!"
E-commerce Week: raise the order value
Bakker.com is the biggest online flower specialist in Europe, and processes 55,000 orders a day. Marketing manager Janine Brieskorn has a challenging case for the students Commerce Entrepreneurship and Organisations: how can we raise the average order value (AOV) of our clients with 10%?
Tourism Business Innovation: attract the Dutch citizen
International Tourism Management students taking part in the Tourism Business Innovation project will work with a case for canal tour operator Stromma. Normally (in a world without corona), 3.7 million visitors make a tour on the canals of Amsterdam each year, but most of them are international tourists. CEO Carola Hoekstra is looking for new ideas to attract Dutch citizens to do a canal tour in Amsterdam: "We're looking for a different type of creativity".
Finance Week: make an investor pitch deck
During the Finance Week, International Business Management students work on drawing up an Investor pitch deck. In this pitch deck, they present the strategic and financial aspects for an existing start-up, with the aim of finding an investor who would be willing to invest in it.
Hotel and Event Week: run a pop-up restaurant
Normally, during the Hotel and Event Week, students take over a StayOkay hostel and transform it into a star hotel. However, due to corona this project takes on another form. Students Hotel and Event Management create a pop-up restaurant and compete against each other with lunches, dinners and drinks and bites boxes.
Sales week: learn to debate
During the Sales Week, students receive various training courses, from debating to sales and acquisition. After the training, they show their skills in practice, and the best debater wins!
Help from the expert!
Keynote speaker Vincent Thamm, culture and change agent at Royal Schiphol Group, inspires the students to think in innovations and gives some practical advice on how to manage their cases in just one week. For example: spend time building your team, use lean canvas, try to create and validate a prototype, learn from the feedback of your client and don't forget: mindset is everything!