About CRE8® Europe

CRE8® is a model for problem-solving in a competitive form. Developed by Karlstad University, CRE8® has been successfully used to help organizations solve real life problems with the help of creative students.
In CRE8® Europe students from Norway, Romania, Spain and Sweden came together to tackle international challenges.

The CRE8® model
CRE8® is a model for creative problem solving in competition form, which develops skills valued by employers and expands the professional networks of the participating students. In a CRE8® workshop, four teams of five students are given a scenario with which to demonstrate their problem-solving skills, before pitching their solution to a jury. These are real life scenarios, sourced from companies or the public sector. Representatives from those organizations are included in the jury.

To prepare the students, the workshop is preceded by an hour-long ‘pitching session’. The session is adapted to the broad area of the workshop scenario (without revealing the specifics of that scenario). For the workshop, the students are divided into their teams, and each team has two hours to develop a solution and prepare the pitch to the jury. The pitch should last no more than five minutes. The jury then has 10 minutes to question the team about their pitch.

Each team individually pitches to the jury. Those waiting to pitch are kept apart, to ensure that there is no inadvertent sharing of solutions between teams. After the pitches, the jury chooses a winning team. If the employer representatives wish to proceed with one or more ideas from the workshop, further contacts will take place directly between them and the students.

CRE8® Europe
CRE8® Europe is now closed. Four national CRE8® Europe events were held (one in each partner country). The entire student cohort attended each event. Each team comprised equal numbers of students from each partner, with a good mix of institutions and disciplines represented each team. The teams had a set time to develop and pitch their solution to a jury. The tasks were real world scenarios, sourced from partner alumni in companies or the public sector, who also joined on the jury. The jury provided feedback on the pitches and chose a winning team.

Project Partners