Overview

For over 150 years, the German Red Cross (GRC) has seen it as its task to provide comprehensive assistance to people in conflict situations, disasters, and health or social emergencies. This is what the more than 177,000 employees and 435,000 volunteers stand for in the most diverse areas of work, such as rescue and health services, disaster relief or as social care providers.

Problem

As a modern, future-oriented aid organisation, the German Red Cross is continuously working on digital and analog offerings to be able to provide assistance even faster, in a more targeted and humane manner. Employees and volunteers alike contribute new, diverse and innovative ideas every day to modernise the work in the 19 state associations, almost 500 district associations, 31 sisterhoods and more than 4,500 local associations. Due to the size of the association, it is particularly important to bring together contact persons from a wide variety of association members. The idea was to create an attractive platform for members to visualise innovation ideas and projects, to provide attention, reach and opportunities for participation and to network interested and committed parties in a targeted manner. With this in mind, the DRK turned to the Digital Transformation Lab.

Approach

In the summer semester of 2021, a group of students from the Marketing Management master's degree program at the Faculty of Business Administration at the HM University of Applied Sciences Munich dedicated themselves to the project "Innovation Hub for the DRK" and developed proposed solutions for a Germany-wide networking platform for innovations and innovators. The group of students was divided into four teams, of which each addressed one of the four aspects participation, networking, visualisation and implementation during the challenge.

Dr. Beate Rottkemper and Bettina Stuffer from the DRK accompanied the project and were in intensive exchange with the student teams. Susanne Bruch, officer for "Social Innovations and Digitalisation" and deputy head of the team for "Social Trends and Innovations" at the DRK General Secretariat, commented on the objective as follows: "The Innovation Hub gives our member associations the opportunity to present themselves with their innovative projects. In addition, it offers us the chance to show that we as a welfare association work in an innovative and future-oriented way."

The project was organised by the DTLab as an Innovation Challenge and actively supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS). For example, AWS helped students target their ideas with its "Working Backwards" innovation method and many tips on technical implementation. In addition, AWS contributed to a successful and timely project by providing state-of-the-art cloud technologies.

Lars Schmitz from AWS, who as Digital Innovation Lead has already accompanied various Innovation Challenges at different faculties of MUAS, sums up: "I am impressed by the results. The students managed to get to grips with a complex problem in just three months, developed a joint product vision in four teams, implemented it prototypically, and made recommendations to the German Red Cross for the next steps. The satisfaction of the GRC speaks for itself!".

Ideas from the team "Participation"

To motivate members to start and carry out new projects, the student team "Participation" proposed an internal association point system. The prototype that the students designed during the challenge is called "MyCross." Using "MyCross," association members can earn points for each step of a project, from their registration to a final report. Generally, points range from 10 points per hour worked to 250 points for the successful completion of a project. Once a certain number of points is reached, awards will be unlocked in the system, which can be used to sharpen one's own profile or to support other projects. Those who have already successfully participated in several projects can then take part in other projects as a mentor or coach and support other innovators with their experience. There is also the possibility to donate one's own points to a social project of the DRK. The participation in the projects is voluntary and free of charge at all times.

Next steps

The all-around successful project made a big impression on all participants and further challenge collaborations are planned.