We bring you the Next Up case 2015!

Digitization Innovation Gender equality Skills supply Education and training Welfare technology

Preparations for Next Up 2015 are in full swing, and in Stockholm, the five cases that the ten schools will compete for when the spring semester begins are now being chiseled out. The cases for our gold partners Ericsson, TeliaSonera and Sogeti are almost ready, and yesterday a group of teachers gathered to work on the remaining cases together with representatives from our other Stockholm gold partners, HP and IFS.

The cases are created based on the following conditions:

  1. They should be linked to the real business of the case companies.
  2. They should be linked to the curriculum, focusing on the subjects of technology, Swedish and social studies, as well as the curriculum mission statement on entrepreneurship.
  3. They should be inspiring, for both girls and boys.

To ensure this, the cases are developed in collaboration between the case companies, the teacher and students from the DataGirl network - hence yesterday's workshop.

The task of the competing students will be to propose solutions to the cases, which they will present in two ways: a written report and a 10-minute presentation on the day of the competition, which for Stockholm will take place on March 19. Each school will be represented by a team of five, of which at least two must be girls.

All cases are based on the same structure: a premise section, which provides a scenario for the case (preferably with a little dramatic twist that students can relate to), and a mission section, which describes what students should do. Or rather, what the students in the role of an imaginary team from the case company should do. As a central part of creating commitment and a sense of reality, plus getting training in entrepreneurship, students take on the roles of project manager, technical manager, salesperson and so on, and they get to make a real "sales pitch" on the final day.

We won't reveal exactly what the HP and IFS cases are about, but the theme of the cases is the use of IT in school education and smart ways of disseminating consumer information that focus not only on price but on the environment. What characterizes all the cases is their broad, societal approach: it's not just about developing an app or software, but about solving real commercial or societal challenges. For those of us in the IT industry, this may be obvious, but many schoolchildren, and even many teachers, still have a rather limited idea of what it actually means to "work with IT". Something that we hope participation in Next Up will change!

Find out more about Next Up on the Next Up website.