How to stimulate student's creativity and innovation skills with time pressure during education program? The example of “the 24h of innovation®” event

Improving the creativity and innovation student's skills is a key point for most of educational institutions. Created by ESTIA in 2007, “The 24h of innovation^®” (www.24h.estia.fr) is a 24 hours nonstop challenge to develop creative and innovative concepts of products (mechanical, electronic, software...) and services. The concept of this event is simple: projects and topics are proposed by companies, labs, association and they are unveiled at the beginning of the competition. Teams are freely composed of a mix of any volunteers (students, researchers, teachers, consultants, free-lances, employees...). After 24 hours of development, teams present their results in a show of 3 minutes in front of a jury of professionals in the field of innovation. The winner teams receive the “24h of innovation” awards and they receive prizes offered by the sponsors of the event. Since 2007, 3500 participants coming from more than 70 schools & university of 40 different countries have attended one of the 10 editions organized in France and Québec. More than 200 projects have been developed for 100 companies. This full paper is focus on the analysis of time pressure to foster the creativity of students and their skills to produce innovative work.