A Web TV Site for Students. Even on Your Cell Phone

A BOCCONI TEAM WON THE NOKIA UNIVERSITY PROGRAM AND ARE FLYING TO FINLAND TO VISIT THE HEADQUARTERS OF ONE OF THE GIANTS OF THE WORLD MOBILE PHONE INDUSTRY

YouTube? Too general. Something different and something more specific was needed.
This is what Agnese Boschi, Elisa Cannatà, Francescomichele Dessì, Matteo Di Donato, Marta Grondona and Vivien Pederzani, the members of the team Le faremo sapere (We’ll Let You Know), found out. With their project UsIt TV, they thrashed the competition in the 2009 edition of the Nokia University Program (NUP).

Created in 2003 by Nokia, this year's NUP included seven Italian universities (Università della Calabria, Università di Perugia, Sapienza di Roma, Federico II di Napoli, Università di Genova and Università del Salento participated along with Bocconi), whose teams presented 80 projects overall with the participation of 700 students.

At the end of the selections, carried out by a commission of experts in telecommunications and technology nominated by Nokia, five projects were chosen and submitted to a final evaluation.

At Bocconi, the initiative involved three classes in the Marketing Management Master of Science in the Production Innovation and Market Creation course, led by Professor Salvatore Vicari. The project was a challenging assignment for the course: develop a business plan to create a new web TV channel.

"One of Nokia's few constraints," says Matteo Di Donato, 22, from Tortoreto, Abruzzo, "is that the project had to not only be creative and original, but also feasible from a financial point of view." And students took these instructions seriously, as Vivien Pederzani, 22, from Bergamo, explains. "We were involved in all aspects, including communication, the advertising campaign, accounting expenses and personnel transfer, consulting with operators in the sector. We can easily say that our project was low cost."

It's not a general web TV, but rather one with a specific target: university students. "It's a target that we know well," says 23-year old Marta Gondona, from Maddalena in Sardinia. "It's a niche, but at the same time it's a large enough group and meets the requirements Nokia had recommended to have potential users between 20 and 30 years old. Our web TV will be a sort of practical guide to get to know student life and life in the city where it's located. There will be two channels, one with informational material, called SOS and another called Easy Time, which has information about recreation and leisure in the city. There will be a third channel," Marta continued, "made possible thanks to users contributing their own films called My Channel."

The project will have an estimated cost of 1 million euros for the first three years of business, then it will be supported by advertising proceeds (banners) and later on by product placement operations.

In addition, the web TV idea designed by the winning team can be used not only on the computer, but also in a smaller form, on personal cell phones.

"It was a difficult assignment because web TV is still a relatively new and little known product," explains Deborah Raccagni, the faculty member who, along with Paola Cillo, followed the students' projects. "And students had to do a lot of field research to get information."

On the day of the finals, before a commission made up of marketing managers at large companies, university faculty and journalists, one of the UsIt TV team's strong points were their speaking skills. "They gave a very creative presentation, and were able to talk about their project," said Deborah Raccagni. "It was an assignment that, with a just a few specific implementations, could become a real start-up."

The other five finalist teams included two other teams with Bocconi classmates: All Go, with the project SportiVi (Federica Micol Farina, Elena Gagliardi, Martina Galgano, Corinna Siena, Marzia Sminuzza and Denise Taverna); and New Vision, with the project WeRTv (Fabrizia Bodei, Ilaria Bucci, Francesco Calabretta, Daniela Campagna, Luca Casablanca and Francesca Milzia).

by Davide Ripamonti
Translated by Jenna Walker