The Josef Umdasch Research Prize in search of the Future Workplace:

14.03.2019 | The “Call for Ideas” for this year’s Josef Umdasch Research Prize registered 157 submissions from 63 countries. Of these, five finalists qualified for the pitch presentations which were held on Wednesday, March 13, within the framework of the World Summit Awards Congress (WSA) in Portugal.

The five nominees were Pulsetip from Lithuania, QuickSpeech from Austria, Cupp from Canada, Beacon from Kenya and AmBC from Côte d’Ivoire. They all presented visionary proposed solutions to this year’s topic regarding the “Future Workplace.”
“The quality of this year’s entries was once again impressive,” commented Andreas J. Ludwig, Executive Chairman Umdasch Group, adding: “Innovation requires impulses both from within the company and also from the outside. In its new format the Josef Umdasch Research Prize provides us with the opportunity of sharing our major challenges with start-ups from all over the world. We are delighted and inspired by the response – a wealth of new ideas, creative and unconventional, approached from a different angle. And that is precisely what we are looking for.”

Answers found
This year the Umdasch Group subsidiary Doka took advantage of the opportunity provided with the prize to find answers to the question regarding the Future Workplace, in order to implement them into the company together with the winners.

“Doka is expanding: in 2018 alone we welcomed some 500 new employees. Our success in the future will continue to depend on outstanding members of staff and managers. In order to remain an attractive employer we aim to offer an environment in which evolution, development and pleasure in top performance are possible. The skills of our employees, knowledge management, quality of information and communication will increasingly become deciding competitive factors. That is why the ideas presented within the framework of the Josef Umdasch Research Prize are so valuable for us,” explains Harald Ziebula, Chairman of Executive Board Doka.

And the winner is
CUPP from Canada had the most visionary solution: a chatbot which uses its artificial intelligence to provide employees with essential information quickly and easily. Tal Schwartz is the founder and inventor of this idea. This was the second time he submitted an entry for the Josef Umdasch Research Prize – and this year he was successful.

The Umdasch Group Foundation awarded a special prize to AmBC, a social business from Côte d’Ivoire whose idea combats one of the biggest societal problems in Africa: illiteracy. The media and software it uses are modern; the method, however, is simple and adaptable to regional requirements. The jury was full of enthusiasm.

Statement of the Jury
The jury, which comprises internal and external experts, reached agreement quickly. “With the Josef Umdasch Research Prize we are searching for completely new solutions. And so the idea which won was not the one which could be most easily implemented into the company, but rather the one which approached the task in the most innovative way.”

The call for ideas for the Josef Umdasch Research Prize 2020 will be announced in the autumn. The prize will once more be awarded together with the WSA. This time it will be the turn of umdasch The Store Makers to acquire fresh impulses relating to the subject of retailing.

Facts & Figures

Josef Umdasch Research Prize 2019
•The submission for the prize was possible until the end of November 2018.
•The international call targeted start-ups and students - a total of 157 companies from 63 countries registered.
•Wanted: A digital solution for the Future Workplace that can be realized at Doka.
•Nominees pitched during the World Summit Awards Congress (WSA), which took place in Portugal from 11 to 13 March.
•The winner receives the order to implement the solution in the company.

Josef Umdasch Research Prize