Innovating for Impact: My ECIU Creathon Experience in Aveiro – Holly Delaney

This May, Bachelor of Business student Holly Delaney had the exciting opportunity to represent DCU at the ECIU Creathon 2025 in Aveiro, Portugal. As one of four students selected from DCU Business School, Holly joined peers from across Europe for a dynamic three-day innovation sprint hosted by the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU).

Partnering with PRIO, Portugal’s leading biofuel company, Holly’s team was challenged to design sustainable, scalable solutions for the future of mobility.

From pitching business ideas to networking at beach parties, Holly embraced every moment of the Creathon — gaining valuable experience, making international connections, and contributing to meaningful climate-focused change. In this blog post, she shares her reflections on an unforgettable few days:

From business pitches to beach parties – what went down at the ECIU Creathon 2025

Last week, I travelled from Dublin to Aveiro, Portugal to take part in an ECIU challenge-based learning opportunity, the 2025 Creathon. The ECIU stands for the European Consortium of Innovative Universities, and is composed of 14 universities coming from 13 countries across Europe and Mexico. I spent three days in Portugal meeting, studying and innovating alongside fellow students, professors and business leaders. My perspectives were broadened, my knowledge and skills were expanded, and I’ll tell you all about it below!

Day 1:

On the first morning, we had a check in where we got to meet our team members and fellow participants, and get to know each other a bit better. This was followed by a series of inspiring lectures. Firstly, we had a talk from Luís Nunes, an executive board member of Prio Group, the biofuel company who were the challenge providers for the Creathon. This was followed by another lecture on autonomous mobility.

After this we got into our teams and started our group work to define the challenge. Members of the Prio group came over to each team, where we got the chance to discuss the challenge with them, share our ideas and seek their advice. We also worked alongside our “Teamcher” during these sessions, a university professor assigned to each group to provide guidance and support throughout the challenge.

We travelled across campus where we got to enjoy the lovely weather and were provided with lunch. Here we had a brilliant chance to mingle with fellow participants.

After lunch, all participants and mentors gathered, and each group did a pitch of their idea, followed by questions from the stakeholders to validate our proposed challenge.

We continued our group work up until 7pm, starting the investigate phase. After this we had the evening free to explore the city, socialise and go out for dinner with new friends. It was a long and intense first day, but also very interesting and exciting. I learned so much and met a lot of great people.

Day 2:

The second day began in a similar way to the first, with an inspiring lecture on cleaner energy for mobility, giving us food for thought for our group work.

After this, we began working in our teams again, finishing out the investigate phase, where we further defined our guiding questions to help us solve our challenge, and compiled research from across the web. We produced a synthesis report to present the main findings of our research, and as a group gave a pitch to our Teamcher.

For the rest of day two, we worked together on the act phase of the project. Here we identified possible solutions, worked out how these would be implemented in real life and of what benefit they would be to the stakeholders, and evaluated these proposed solutions to find the most promising one. We then went to work on making our presentation slide deck, as we would be giving our final presentation the next morning.

That evening, the organisers hosted a beach party for us. This served as a great opportunity to socialise with more of the participants, and to network with the lecturers and employees & leaders of Prio. They provided us with lovely food and drinks, had a DJ playing live, and we all got to watch the sun set over the sea. This beach party was so much fun and definitely one of the highlights of my trip.

Day 3:

On the final morning, we all gathered in the lecture hall. We met with our groups and went over our presentations for the final time before we would be getting up on the stage in front of the audience and panel of judges. One by one, each group made their presentations, which were all followed by five minutes of questions from the judges. It was very interesting to see the direction each group went in, and what innovations they came up with. Finally, it was my group’s turn to present. I was full of adrenaline stepping onto the stage, ready to show everyone what our group had been working so hard on for the past few days. We had prepared for what types of questions the judges might ask, but there’s always one that comes from an angle you hadn’t thought of before. This was an excellent exercise in thinking on your feet, and I’m incredibly proud of how we responded to the challenge.

Before we knew it, all the presentations were over, and it was the judges’ turn to deliberate. They presented the award to the winning team, €1000 for each member to spend on further training. While my team didn’t win, there was a great buzz in the hall as everyone was so happy to see the winning team receive their prize.

Overall, attending this Creathon is an experience I will never forget. In an extremely intense three days I learned more than I could have ever imagined. I further developed my skills in business innovation and implementation, public speaking and business pitching, as well as working in a multidisciplinary and multinational team. As well as this, I made connections with some really incredible peers all across Europe. We all had a ball at this Creathon and made great memories.

To any student considering taking part in a challenge with the ECIU, I can’t recommend it highly enough, you won’t regret it!