Smash the Box-Challenge – Sustainable Logistics for Reusable Dishes in Dortmund

Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

The project Smash the Box-Challenge - Sustainable Logistics for Reusable Dishes in Dortmund sets up a student-led ideation and innovation project as well as a series of training workshops in the area of social innovation and social entrepreneurship using a particular societal challenge formulated by the municipality of Dortmund.

The project's main focus is to encourage students at all levels, including doctoral candidates, to gain vital knowledge and develop core competences in the area of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, ultimately enabling them to realize their own innovative ideas. To this end, a competition of ideas open to students at all levels including doctoral candidates is complemented by self-learning phases and stakeholder confrontation formats. The specific challenge addressed in the project is to find new ways for establishing sustainable logistics for reusable dishes throughout the gastronomic and catering landscape of Dortmund.

The ideation and validation process of the competition is structured through university-related training and further education workshops focusing on theory and methods of social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Participation in the project and training sessions are open to all students of TU Dortmund University, including doctoral candidates. In addition to setting up an innovative pilot in interdisciplinary, project-based social innovation education, the project aims at setting up new ways of and strengthening the existing cooperation between the university, the city administration/ social innovation center, and other stakeholders. The pilot serves as a model for the establishment of new cooperative practices between local stakeholders and intends to foster structural development processes enhancing the potential of social innovation. Consequently, the project increases awareness about universities’ roles in the local and regional social innovation ecosystem in particular and the use of research, education, and the "third mission" to improve living conditions in general.

Centre for Entrepreneurship & Transfer (CET; TU Dortmund) as a formal partner; Supporting partners: Economic Development Agency Dortmund; Logistikbude; CUNA Mehrweg mit System; HEIDI – Heimat Digital

The project aims to empower students at all levels including doctoral candidates in addressing societal challenges in a co-creative manner. The project focusses on fostering a set of skills and competences specifically associated with social innovation and social entrepreneurship education, such as value-based orientation, social and cultural intelligence, managing and using diversity including the constructive validation of own ideas through diverse perspectives of relevant stakeholders and their experience.

The project adapts existing entrepreneurship-related methods used in the creation of social innovations and set up of social entrepreneurship. Concretely, the project restructures the cetup.ID program, which was developed at the Center for Entrepreneurship & Transfer at TU Dortmund University and has been employed to guide and qualify teams in the validation and development phases of startup ideas since 2020. Based on this experience, the project pilot sharpens the cetup.ID program’s focus to social innovation and social entrepreneurship using the particular societal challenge of a sustainable logistic for reusable dishes.

Additionally, the supervision of project participants is intensified to increase the project’s success rate and allow for a detailed project evaluation and analysis. Weekly meetings with assigned coaches (Weeklys) take place during the self-learning phases in between workshops, providing an opportunity for constructive feedback on the progress made. An additional enhancement to the program is made by the set up of structured engagement formats that bring together various involved stakeholder and participant groups in a targeted manner. This allows the integration of diverse perspectives from relevant stakeholders and their everyday life experiences. To evaluate the competences the students develop during the project a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods will be employed using surveys as well as interview formats and group discussions during the Weeklys.

https://smash.tu-dortmund.de/