Up-and-coming entrepreneurs, with bright ideas for innovative new businesses, benefited from the advice and encouragement of respected business mentors during a high-energy weekend at Cranfield School of Management.
StartUp Weekend, co-ordinated by the School’s Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship, provides a safe space for fledgling business ideas to be developed and pitched to experienced mentors, with the aim of finding the most viable business opportunities.
PhD, MSc and MBA students, as well as potential start-up companies from outside the University, brought ideas ranging from technology for disease detection, to new recruitment software and artificial intelligence toys for children with disabilities. Each delegate was encouraged to assess technology-readiness, cash flow and market need through a variety of presentations and group discussions.
Dr Shai Vyakarnam, Director of the Bettany Centre and Dr Stephanie Hussels, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, jointly led proceedings during the weekend. Stephanie said: “The idea behind StartUp Weekend is to provide aspiring business people with the support they need to turn their idea into a sustainable business. The sessions we run during the weekend encourage them to consider all aspects of how they go about doing that.
“We could not host these weekends without the support and expertise of our alumni, who are extremely successful in their fields, and I’d like to extend a huge ‘thank you’ to those who returned as mentors this year.”
One such mentor was Stella Donoghue, who studied an MBA at Cranfield from 1999-2000. Stella has since worked in finance director and managing director roles within a variety of fast-growth, private-equity-backed businesses.
She said: “My experience at Cranfield has certainly enhanced my career.
“I am delighted to be able to give some time and expertise back to the School of Management now, and to see ideas generated at these events come to fruition.”
Dr Richard Goodwin is an Executive MBA student and Consultant Radiologist and Chief of Service at Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. Richard attended the StartUp Weekend with his innovative idea to develop secure knowledge management software for clinicians across all disciplines to meet their needs for lifelong learning and professional development.
He said: “Attending StartUp Weekend helped greatly with my business concept, in particular with clarifying next steps in the ore-revenue stage. The mentors and experts encouraged us to think outside of the box to perfect our pitches and make sure we had covered as many eventualities as possible to ensure our business concepts were realistic.
“It has been a fantastic opportunity to learn from some inspiring business mentors, and I look forward to now working more closely with the specialists in the Bettany Centre to get my app off the ground.”
Participant in a previous StartUp Weekend, CorrosionRADAR, secured more than £350,000 funding earlier this year to further its research. The Cranfield spin-out firm was established by an international team of four scientists and business professionals with the main aim of addressing the at-that-time-unmet industry challenge of monitoring corrosion in oil and gas pipelines.
Cranfield runs two StartUp Weekends each year. For more information, and to register for future events, see our StartUp Weekend page.
StartUp Weekend April 2018
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Cranfield has been a world leader in management education and research for over 50 years, helping individuals and organisations learn and succeed by transforming knowledge into action. We are dedicated to creating responsible management thinking, improving business performance and inspiring the next generation of business leaders. We work to change the lives of our students and executives by encouraging innovation and creative thinking, as well as the drive to succeed and make a real impact on their organisations.
Organisations as diverse as Jaguar Land Rover, BAE Systems, Royal Dutch Shell, L’Oréal, UNICEF and the African Development Bank have benefited from our work, which ranges from management research projects, through staff talent management development on our MBA courses, to customised executive programmes.
Cranfield is one of an elite group of Schools worldwide to hold the triple accreditation of: AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) and AMBA (the Association of MBAs).
We are in the Top 10 International Business Schools in the Forbes’ ranking.
Our open and customised executive education programmes are ranked in the top five in the UK, according to the latest Financial Times survey, and in the top ten in the world for international reach. Over 10,000 people come to Cranfield each year to benefit from our executive and professional development programmes.
