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KEEN on enterprise for students in East London

Last Wednesday Striding Out organised the launch of KEEN, a student enterprise club supported by Knowledge East, a higher education partnership for undergraduate and  postgraduate students and academics from eight East London universities

The evening consisted of short presentations from:

  • Sam Conniff from Livity a socially-responsible youth marketing agency.
  • Zoe Stanton from Us Creates who design effective, progressive and individual initiatives for societal issues within the UK.
  • Jordan Kensington, from the Invincible Media Group, founder of the Urban Music Awards and promoter of British Music Week.
  • Henry Warren from Gemin-i, who specialise in developing innovative web-based solutions to empower, educating and inspiring people across the world.

The speaker who made the greatest impression on me was Jordan Kensington, the very confident (some might say brash) founder of Invincible Media. He is convinced that all an entrepreneur needs is a very clear view of their future. He explained that he started his business with no money, but he had a film running in his head of the future of his business. His belief in this image was so strong that everything else just fell into place. This approach is overlapping somewhat into NLP territory, but it obviously worked for Jordan as his business empire has grown rapidly. He even had the gall to succesfully export his Urban Music Awards from the UK to the USA.

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The Boots Centre for Innovation wants your ideas

One of the most interesting speakers at The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition was from the The Boots Centre for Innovation. It was good to hear that an organisation as large an bureaucratic as Boots is prepared to do something radical in order to foster innovation.
Boots centre for innovation
They recognised that getting new ideas from inside the company was not the most effective way to deliver new products to the market. So they teamed up with the Institute of Life Science at Swansea University, the Welsh Assembly and Longbow Capital to build a new centre based in Swansea ,investing £3 million of Boots money.

They can provide support and funding for the development of innovative products and technologies. But are particularly looking for new ideas for products in the following ten areas:

1 Improve and maintain the health, look and feel of skin
2 Improve the health and appearance of teeth and gums
3 Devices that enable people to monitor key aspects of their health
4 Improve the health, appearance and comfort of eyes
5 Improve digestive health, particularly issues related to stress, poor diet and obesity
6 Minimise the severity and duration of pain
7 Improve quality of sleep for everyone [including pregnant women, babies and the elderly]
8 Minimise the complications of living with diabetes
9 Anti-ageing products and devices for mind and body
10 Create more convenient methods of taking and using medicines and health products

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Turn your water-tap into a fire-hose in under 10 seconds

This is the rather remarkable claim form Edward van Noord another of the exhibitors at The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition. He has patented a way of attaching a very compact hose pipe to a normal household cold water tap. This is yet another case of what I would consider to be a really obvious solution to a problem which I’m sure many of you would already have thought about (I know I have).

Amazingly the particular solution Edward van Noord came up with hadn’t already been patented. Even more impressive is the way he has developed both the product and marketing all on his own. He had even paid for the stand at the show out of his own money.

The good news is that his perseverance (an essential component for any entrepreneur) is now being rewarded with sales increasing across Europe at a rapid rate.

The product is called 1-2-3 stop fire and you can see what you think of it below.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=IgtK5irM8xU]

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E.ON EnergyLab giving away £15,000 to inventors

E.On the electricity and gas company has joined forces with former Tomorrow’s World presenter Philippa Forrester to launch the E.ON EnergyLab nationwide talent search to find Britain’s next big innovations in energy efficiency.

The judging panel will be looking for clever creations that could revolutionise the future of energy and how it used.

The closing date is 30 November so you will have to get your skates on and apply at www.eon-energylab.co.uk if you want to enter.

If you are in need of inspiration the site offers some suggestions for ‘generating’ ideas:

If you are finding it a challenge to get started, we’ve put together a simple approach that may help you generate some great ideas. Try using the following steps either on your own or with friends:
1. Define the problem

* So what problem do you want to solve?
* Is it in your home, school or office?
* Is it a problem that has been around for a long time?
* Generate a list of ‘problem’ topics

2. Creating ideas

* The idea here is to generate as many ideas as possible. Remember there are no ‘dumb ideas’ – they all count at this stage
* Set yourself a period of time to think – say 30 minutes
* Create a topic and stick to it (use your list of topics from step 1)
* Realise your ideas in words, pictures and anything that helps you describe your ideas – be creative!

3. Look at similar problems

* How have inventors approached similar problems in the past?
* If it’s a good idea it may have been done before – it’s worth checking before you enter
* How could existing inventions be improved?
* Are there parallel problems or solutions that you can draw inspiration from?

4. Start to define your solution / invention

* Try focusing of 2-3 ideas that you think have a chance of solving the problem you have set yourself
* Write down the pros and cons of each one
* Can you draw on ideas from previous inventions?

So now you are really inventing! You’ve picked your topic, generated ideas, narrowed these down to a short list and shortly you’ll have your preferred idea. Just keep asking questions of your invention and try and have an answer for everything.

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Prime Thinkers – Developing creative ideas for business, charities and the voluntary sector

At the recent The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition at Alexandra Palace I came across a stand for Prime Thinkers. They are a group of 20 experienced business owners, managers in large corporations, academics and senior government officials, many of whom have now retired. The idea is that someone with a business idea or invention presents to and participates in a brainstorming session with a group of 8 or 10 of the Prime Thinkers team.

Together they will spend an hour focussed on solving anything from brand names, raising finance, finding customers, sourcing manufacturers and anything else relevant to the business idea.

The cost is £75 per session, but with all of the money going directly to the charity Kith and Kids.

If you are interested contact mauricecollins@msn.com or 07796991140

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The rise of the Milli-grip spanner

At last years British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition I came across a brilliant invention for anyone who has ever scraped their knuckles undoing nuts and bolts with an adjustable spanner.

I remember asking what new technology the Milli-grip spanner incorporated, and was surprised to hear that the only thing new was the idea of the ratchet, which could have been developed at any point during the last 200 years of adjustable spanners.

Although it was nice to see the company exhibiting again this year with an improved and expanded product range, it was also somewhat disappointing they still needed to be there publicising the product. Apparently to keep their admin down, the larger retail chains don’t buy products from single item producers. I am hoping they won’t need to be there in 2008.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=8BNjzoqYn3M]

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A packet of crisps in a bar

Today was my second annual visit to the The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition (of which more anon). As someone with a relatively limited imagination I have to confess I just can’t understand where inventors get their ideas from.

For instance I would never have thought up the idea for Crisp Bars. In fact everything about it just sounds wrong to me. But, as is so often the way with inventions (and this one is patented) the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Or in this case in the crunching. I approached the product with great cynicism but was proved wrong once again. The ‘bars’ not only taste like standard crisps but somehow manage to maintain the crispiness of a crisp.
As with almost all inventors I come across, the idea sprang from seeking a solution to a problem. In this case, how to continue to consume crisps when you have a babe in arms, and so only have one hand to spare for eating purposes.

Their website doesn’t seem to be working at the moment but you can watch a video where Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame tests them out on the 5 o’clock show.

Watch this space to where this product goes…

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The importance of having 99 straights and 1 weirdo

I have just been watching one of the Inspiring Entrepreneurs videos we have recently posted onto YouTube.

The charismatic James Brown (founder of Loaded Magazine) talks about how he created a team of weirdos who would have been unemployable elsewhere to create a completely new kind of magazine.  He describes a talk by business guru Tom Peters where he pronounced on the importance of employing weirdos to introduce change to a business. Brown reversed the process and had one straight guy for every 99 weirdos.

james_brown

 

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Grey entrepreneurs are the ‘new black’

Entrepreneurship includes all classes, creeds and ages but one of the biggest growth areas are what have been dubbed ‘Grey entrepreneurs‘.

One might naively assume that these would consist of retired business professionals. But a group of Swiss grannies would prove you wrong according to the latest issue of Springwise.

Netgranny is a collective of 15 grannies who knit socks on demand and sell them online. Customers can choose their favourite granny from a gallery of ‘Grosis’, which includes information on why the women knit (‘not for money, just to pass the time’) or about their professional credentials (‘at age 6, I taught my 4 year-old sister to knit’).

Customers can pick the colour of their socks, or opt for a surprise design. After placing an order, their personal sock-knitting granny will take approximately two weeks to knit the pair of socks.

As you can see below, the grannies vary from the funky, to the cuddly, to the slightly scary.

Netgranny 1Netgranny 2Netgranny 3