The current pandemic is one of the biggest crises of our lifetime, finding ways to address it from all angles is vital. April 3–6, innovators from the public and private sectors academia, non-profit organizations and citizens got together to find digital solutions designed to be useable quickly by different authorities in Sweden. The Stockholm School of Economics joined Hack the Crisis Sweden through its House of Innovation (HOI) and Business Lab.

Break even and save a business

The winner of the category Save Business, an initiative called Break Even, recognizes that many people want to support local business, but do not know how. Break Even offers a solution to this by creating an interface that visualizes exactly how much help a business needs in real-time. Co-creator of Break Even is Carissma Dennis, currently an SSE MBA student. 

The point of the initiative is for “customers [to] get a definite way to act and help community to ‘break-even’”. An example of its usage is representing the data from a restaurant on how many home delivery orders per week need to be completed to fulfill the business criteria. This data is updated on a daily basis by the restaurant and users will be able to see the information in the interface.

Break Even is being hailed for its potential to bring local communities together, as well as its clear and unique value proposition for the consumer.  

Contributing to solutions

SSE recognizes the importance of coming together to contribute to solutions that will help save lives, communities and businesses in the near future. Together with other organizations, House of Innovation helped fund the prize and SSE Business Lab will offer entrepreneurship advice to the winning teams. At this point, the Swedish Agency for Digital Government (DIGG) is coordinating the matchmaking process between the winning teams and the partners, i.e. SSE Business Lab.

The SSE community and stakeholders, especially the SSE corporate partners, led the change and came together to hack the crisis. Companies like SEB, H&M Group, Accenture, AstraZeneca, Electrolux, Sandvik, Telia and Swedbank were also sponsors or partners of this joint initiative from the public and private sectors to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden.