Challenge provider
Linköping University (LiU) is one of Sweden’s leading universities, known for innovative education, interdisciplinary research, and close collaboration with industry and society. Founded in 1975, LiU has four campuses and a strong international reputation, preparing students to address global challenges through creativity, knowledge, and innovation.
Background
Every year, hundreds of companies, authorities, municipalities and non-profits knock on LiU’s door wanting to work with students and researchers — a thesis, a course project, a research collaboration, a quick consultancy-style task. In theory, that should be easy. In practice, they hit three different doors: a Microsoft Forms-based case system for incoming requests, the website studentuppdrag.se for course-based assignments, and the degree-project database exjobb.liu.se for finished theses. Each door works fine on its own. Together, they’re a maze.
Behind the scenes, it’s not much better. Every request has to be read, sorted, matched to the right course, programme, supervisor or researcher, and chased up — often by hand, often across several units and faculties, with no shared way to see where a case actually is, which organisations keep coming back, which requests never find a home, or what a collaboration actually led to once it’s “done.”
So while collaboration with the surrounding society is one of LiU’s core missions — right up there with education and research — the plumbing behind it hasn’t kept pace. Organisations shouldn’t need a map of LiU’s org chart just to ask for help.
The challenge
Design a concept for what happens between the moment an organisation says “we’d like to work with LiU” and the moment that collaboration is actually up and running — and tracked.
Two problems, one challenge:
- Inside LiU: give staff a structured, efficient way to register, assess, route, match and follow up on incoming cases — with an overview that today simply doesn’t exist across Forms, studentuppdrag.se and exjobb.liu.se.
- Outside LiU: give organisations one clear, welcoming way in, so they never have to guess which system, page or person is the right one.
You don’t have to scrap what already exists — show us how the process, and the tools around it, could actually work together. Map how a request moves through LiU today, find where cases get lost, stall or get duplicated, dig into what organisations actually need to find and use the right channel, and design a concept — digital, organisational, or both — for a front door that’s easy to find, easy to use, and easy to track all the way through.