The Gun and Einar Larsson Scholarship offers outstanding students at Stockholm School of Economics the opportunity to create and realize innovative projects abroad according to their own design. The aim of the scholarship is to offer experience and personal development outside of the academic realm that benefit the student’s education and professional aspirations. 

Solar power solutions in Kenya

Amanda Blomdahl and Hugo Nordström were awarded the scholarship for their project Off-grid solar business, based in Kenya. Amanda Blomdahl and Hugo Nordström have long been interested in sustainability issues and solar power technologies in particular. 

"The Gun and Einar Stiftelse (GELS) Scholarship offers us an excellent opportunity to explore this area by studying the solar power market in Kenya, the largest market for off-grid solar power solutions in Africa. We want to see if and how a business plan can be developed to address the market problems", the pair explains.

The findings, in terms of market and customer insights, will be used to create a business plan that will be pitched to organizations that could implement the plan as a part of their operations, as well as parties interested in founding a new venture based on the business plan. 

"Ideally, this project is the starting point for a venture that we ourselves can participate in founding after the project is finished."

Robots in elderly care

Daniel Johannesson was awarded the scholarship for his project Robots vs. Humans, based in Japan. In today’s world where the population is getting older and older, we need to find new ways to take care of our elders, Johannesson explains. In Sweden as well as in many other countries, the elderly care is struggling with a lot of problems that comes with the aging population; not enough resources to work with, the elders are longing for more social stimulation and there are not enough people willing to work within this sector.

"Japan has taken it upon themselves to work with these challenges by using robots in both the practical day-to-day work as well as a way for social stimulation. The goal of the project is to develop a practical strategy of how we can learn from Japan's advancement and how we could implement it into Swedish health care", he says.