INNOVA Europe 2025: Ideas that travel further

On September 5th, ESMT Berlin hosted the Grand Finale of the third annual INNOVA Europe competition. Teams from 11 leading European and international business schools came together to present projects aimed at tackling some of today’s most pressing challenges.

Founded in 2022 by ESMT Berlin, EDHEC Business School, and POLIMI Graduate School of Management, INNOVA Europe was created to give aspiring entrepreneurs a platform to test solutions in environmental transition, empowerment and inclusion, and healthy living. Hosting this year’s finale reaffirmed ESMT’s role as co-founder and convenor, connecting academic talent with pressing real-world needs.

Highlights from the day

The competition unfolded in two categories: Young Hopes for early-stage ideas and Rising Stars for startups already moving toward implementation.

AcouBatt, representing London Business School, took the Rising Stars prize with its novel approach to battery production. By fitting batteries with acoustic sensors and analyzing the signals with machine learning, the startup can monitor the cell formation process in real time. This method reduces scrap rates and improves efficiency in an industry that currently discards up to 20 percent of materials during production. The team, led by battery scientist Arthur Fordham and commercial specialist Chris Haoxin Xu, received €20,000 and a year of incubation at one of the participating schools.

The Young Hopes award went to Hovanka from Kyiv School of Economics. Their project, Mindset Architect, is a personalized, adaptive mental health app designed to support users between therapy sessions. CEO Kris Nadiryan and the team came to Berlin after nearly 24 hours of travel from Ukraine, determined to present their vision of a tool that blends psychoeducation with daily practice. For their work, they received €5,000 to advance the prototype.

In addition to these prizes, two other startups with roots in ESMT's Vali Entrepreneurship Hub also participated in the competition. Saiver, which began in Vali’s Summer Entrepreneurship Program, is working on reducing the carbon footprint of generative AI by routing user queries to energy-efficient models and optimizing prompts. Today, the venture is co-led by founders Anita Garbin and Filippo Bernardoni, who continue to refine the solution for a more sustainable AI future. CinSOIL, which emerged from Vali’s NEXT program, recently secured a pre-seed funding round. Their AI-powered platform helps companies address Scope 3 carbon emissions by using soil as a natural carbon sink, while also improving biodiversity and soil health. Both teams showcased the strength of ESMT’s venture-building ecosystem, even though they did not win prizes in Berlin this year.

Human stories at the forefront

Behind each pitch were personal experiences that gave the projects depth. Hovanka grew out of Nadiryan’s own struggle with a system that left them without support between therapy sessions. After confronting inadequate and buggy digital tools during moments of crisis, Nadiryan and co-founder Bohdan set out to create a system that would provide structure, guidance, and resilience. Their appearance on stage in Berlin, after a demanding journey from Kyiv, made their win all the more poignant.

For AcouBatt, the journey was about translating scientific expertise into practical application. With backgrounds spanning Oxford, UCL, and London Business School, Fordham and Xu combined technical insight with commercial know-how to tackle a problem plaguing manufacturers worldwide: the inefficiency of “blind” battery formation. Their work shows how academic research can become a scalable industrial solution.

Building community

INNOVA Europe is not only about the competition. The evening before the finale, a mixer for participating teams set the tone for the days ahead. “The participants found themselves connecting as entrepreneurs around the common challenges and passions they share,” reported Nicola Filzmoser, INNOVA Lead at Vali Entrepreneurship Hub at ESMT. “It was a memorable moment that showed the event’s role as a networking and community-building initiative.”

That sense of community carried into the final day. As Filzmoser reflected afterwards:

“I’ve been working on INNOVA for months already, met everyone online several times, but coming together for two days of activities, and especially the Grand Final on Friday, took this to another level. I truly felt the spirit of this coalition, the drive to empower responsible entrepreneurship among our startup teams, the vision to bring positive change to the European innovation ecosystem. It was a unique feeling, and it won’t stop here. We’re already planning the fourth edition of the INNOVA competition for 2026.”

Reflections from the jury

The jury members, drawn from across academia, industry, and entrepreneurship, also emphasized the importance of the initiative.

As keynote speaker and jury member, Matthias Treutwein, co-founder and director of the board at enpact e.V., highlighted the broader value of entrepreneurship education: “Entrepreneurship is the ideal teacher for life competencies, as its lessons include – among others – focus, attitude, communication, awareness, discipline, networking, and self-care. Creating and developing entrepreneurs will be a key to future success for leading business schools worldwide.”

Another jury member, Bernd Brunke, MD at Edelweiss Innovation, praised the event’s energy and spirit: “I loved the energy and innovation drive. A great event to be enthusiastic about the future. Thanks to all the teams for their ideas and passion.”

Alexandra Wudel, founder of FemAI and Rising Stars jury member, summed it up simply: “I wish to see more initiatives like yours!”

Looking ahead

The 2025 finale showed how far ideas can travel when given a platform. Some teams arrived with refined prototypes, others with early-stage concepts. All left with feedback from peers and experts, and a stronger sense of belonging to a European network of entrepreneurs.

By hosting INNOVA Europe, ESMT underlined the role of business schools not only as places of learning but as convenors of action—bringing together talent, ideas, and determination to shape solutions for the future.