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Amsterdam Business School Amsterdam Business School

MSc BA students help ING tackle real-world challenges

6 March 2024

For the second year in a row, MSc Business Administration students recently engaged in a real-world challenge as part of their Innovation Management course, led by assistant professor Dr Vilma Chila.
One of the ABS teams and their ING coach
One of the ABS teams and their ING coach

In this challenge, the Amsterdam Business School (ABS) students were asked to provide innovative solutions that would help ING tackle 3 issues.

The topics of the 3 challenges were:

  • Sustainability & housing market;
  • Financial health;
  • closing the loop with customer feedback.

8 student teams were asked to put in action the theory and insights gained from the course and provide innovative solutions for the challenge they picked. Each team was matched with an ING employee who coached them for 6 weeks. The 3 teams that provided the richest insights and solutions for each of the challenges were selected to present their solutions to senior management at ING headquarters. Some of the solutions developed by the students included digital solutions for educating ING customers regarding the benefits of investing, incentivising ING customers to make sustainable choices for their houses, and proposing ways ING could use AI and communities to be more responsive to customers’ feedback.

Learning journey

'I believe it is crucial for the students’ learning journey to be trained in how to connect theory with practice and societal challenges. The classroom is a 'safe' environment for students to go through that training and learn not only from success but also from failure', says Chila. The students from the winning teams were encouraged to participate in ING’s traineeship programme. Thanks to the success of the challenge, ING plans to continue this collaboration with the ABS in the future.