Accom­pa­nied by the Inno­va­tion and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Depart­ment (DIDDT) of UTC, sev­er­al stu­dents take part each year in the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Acad­e­my which takes place in Por­to (Por­tu­gal) in sum­mer. We meet one of them. Bap­tiste Viera, cur­rent­ly major­ing in Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, with the elec­tive spe­cial­i­ty Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Data Sci­ence, who is wear­ing the colours of UTC at this event. 

The begin­ning of the jour­ney for Bap­tiste Viera start­ed in Octo­ber 2021 with the Créathon, with 48 hours to devel­op a start-up idea, organ­ised by the DIDDT. UTC stu­dents worked in groups with a men­tor from the busi­ness world. Then, he took part in the inno­v­a­tive project com­pe­ti­tion, of which he was one of the win­ners. «That’s when the idea of cre­at­ing an appli­ca­tion at the inter­sec­tion of a tra­di­tion­al fit­ness appli­ca­tion and a video game expe­ri­ence was born. At the end of Decem­ber 2021, I applied for the Nation­al Stu­dent Entre­pre­neur Sta­tus (SN2E), which I obtained. This allows me to fol­low train­ing cours­es and activ­i­ties on entre­pre­neur­ship, to obtain ECTS cred­its for my project and gives me the pos­si­bil­i­ty, if I wish, to replace my end­of- study intern­ship with my entre­pre­neur­ial project,» stress­es the com­pa­ny cre­ator who, last Jan­u­ary, decid­ed to take part in the Sport Busi­ness Chal­lenge com­pe­ti­tion organ­ised by EDHEC French Busi­ness School. After sev­er­al months’ work, and after pass­ing the var­i­ous selec­tion stages, he won the com­pe­ti­tion. «Bap­tiste is one of the many stu­dents who has devel­oped a matu­ri­ty for entre­pre­neur­ship very ear­ly on. The DIDDT exists to open doors for them and to pro­vide numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­cov­er the work­ings of inno­va­tion,» recalls Vir­ginie Lamarche, head of the Entre­pre­neur­ship Pole of the DIDDT at UTC, which finances access to the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Acad­e­my, as well as the inno­v­a­tive entre­pre­neur­ial projects.

The EIA adventure

In the sum­mer of 2022, he joined the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Acad­e­my and made it to the Top Ten projects out of 450 stu­dents. «The EIA took me through the three major stages of life. Child­hood dur­ing the first week which was intense and chal­leng­ing as it involved team build­ing, prob­lem iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and client val­i­da­tion. Ado­les­cence dur­ing week 2, which was ded­i­cat­ed to pro­to­typ­ing, the mar­ket­ing cam­paign and the Demo Day. Final­ly, adult­hood dur­ing the final week focused on the busi­ness mod­el, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and pitch­ing the project, to investors, all accom­pa­nied by excep­tion­al men­tors. The EIA also allowed me to make new friends from all over the world, a tru­ly fan­tas­tic adven­ture made pos­si­ble thanks to UTC, which financed our par­tic­i­pa­tion,» relates Bap­tiste Viera, is reg­is­tered for in a dou­ble degree at the Ecole de Tech­nolo­gie Supérieure in Mon­tre­al (ETS-Mon­tre­al) in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy. This train­ing allows him to acquire a dou­ble set of skills in com­put­er devel­op­ment and in dig­i­tal project man­age­ment. Today, his project is at the advanced pro­to­type stage. It is an appli­ca­tion that works on a smart­phone. Very soon, he will fly to the «Glob­al Con­fer­ence» in Chica­go where he will be able to present/pitch his project and acquire more skills in busi­ness, mar­ket­ing and lead­er­ship. Since the end of Sep­tem­ber, Bap­tiste has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the online Pitch Com­pe­ti­tion organ­ised by the Col­le­giate Entre­pre­neurs’ Orga­ni­za­tion. He is one of the top 100 projects among 600 can­di­dates. Will he make it to the top 20? Stay tuned — the answer will come in November.