All posts by Althea Taylor-Salmon

Blog, SMFs (Members)

SMFs, can you help the world’s brightest young engineers to become future engineering leaders?

SMF Sam Cockerill, CEO, Libertine FPE

The experience, network and friends I have gained through the Engineers in Business Fellowship have had an enormous impact on my career and personal development since I graduated from INSEAD in 2001, supported by a Sainsbury Management Fellows scholarship. But perhaps the most valuable aspect of this continuing relationship for me has been the opportunity to work with the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Engineering Leadership Scholarship (ELS) scheme.

Over the past 17 years, I have worked alongside other SMFs, Academy fellows and ELS alumni to help select new ELS awardees from each year’s engineering undergraduate applicants, and to help train and mentor each new cohort. These are some of the world’s brightest young engineers, intent on using engineering skills to tackle society’s toughest problems, and looking for support for their personal development plans that will see many of them become future engineering leaders.

I hope sharing some of my experience of the ELS scheme will tempt you to get in touch to find out how you can help the Royal Academy of Engineering develop this next generation.

About the Engineering Leadership Scholarship scheme
The ELS programme is an annual award scheme for undergraduates in engineering and related disciplines who have the potential to become engineering leaders, and in turn to act as role models for future engineers.  All successful applicants receive £5,000 to be used over three years towards personal development activities. Award recipients also receive training and mentoring to help them fulfil their potential to move into engineering leadership positions in industry soon after graduation.

The trigger for me getting involved in the ELS programme came at an SMF Annual Dinner 17 years ago, from a chance conversation with Dr Peter Revell, then Undergraduate Programme Manager at the Royal Academy of Engineering. I discovered that the relationship between Sainsbury Management Fellowship and the Royal Academy of Engineering was broad and synergistic, with reciprocal involvement across the selection, training and mentoring activities of each organisation.

Not only was my interest piqued, I also felt that getting involved in the ELS programme could allowed me to start ‘paying forwards’ the generosity of the SMF scheme from which my own career and personal development has benefitted.

Helping on selection day
My involvement in the ELS scheme has grown over the years, and began with supporting the interview and selection event. Held in March each year, this annual event brings together selected engineering undergraduates from top-ranked higher education institutions all over the country to take part in an intense, fun-packed day of group exercises and networking, with individual interviews taking place in between these activities.

Although not a formal part of the selection process, the group exercises help candidates to relax and socialise, and conversations during breaks and lunch with other applicants, ELS alumni, SMFs and RAE fellows provide a flavour of the energy, diversity, and common purpose of this high calibre engineering community. At interview, candidates get to share their perspective on the role of engineering in society, their background, ambitions and career plans, as they try to secure one of the £5,000 scholarships awarded each year.

I first began my involvement with the interview and selection process gently, initially sitting alongside a Royal Academy of Engineering fellow who would lead the interview. More recently I have led interviews alongside other SMFs and ELS alumni who are now also involved in the selection process. Around seventy interviews take place throughout the day, typically with 10 interview panels assessing seven candidates in a series of half-hour interviews. The supporting interviewer sits with one lead interviewer in the morning and another in the afternoon, which helps provide another perspective and ensure consistency across each of the interview panels. After the interviews are complete, the selection process concludes with a structured review of candidate interview performance against the ELS award’s selection criteria, in which all interviewers share their findings. Supporting interviewers can summarise their assessment of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, often providing an important second opinion that helps balance or qualify the assessment of the person leading the interview.

The ELS training weekend – Saturday all day & Sunday Half Day: October 5 & 6 2019
I also take part in the annual ELS training event held at Aston University each year. These weekend events are in theory more relaxed than the selection days, though are larger events since all three current cohorts attend, and in practice share much of the same atmosphere, energy and pace. For the new awardees it’s an opportunity to meet others in their group, compare personal development plans, and learn about the impact of the award for several ELS alumni who have begun their engineering careers.

Participants arrive on Friday evening or Saturday morning, with the most recent cohort arriving first for a formal welcome and scene-setting talk. The weekend’s schedule is punctuated throughout with coffee and lunch breaks where all three cohorts mingle and meet with their fellow award holders, and with SMFs and RAE fellows.

Saturday kicks off with a series of break-out sessions with each cohort having its own tailored programme of group-based interactive activities covering a range of topics from personal development planning, communication, team working, negotiation, marketing, and MBA-style business games and role-playing activities. SMFs play a key role in preparing, running and supporting these exercises.

Before breaking for dinner, two to three recent graduates of the scheme give short presentations to the whole group about their current roles, and how they have used their financial award.  Aside from the enthusiasm, confidence and charisma of the speakers, what is most striking in these alumni presentations is the breadth and quality of experience that the ELS scholarship has enabled – whether on a summer spent developing an energy access project in Africa, a study tour to visit high tech manufacturing businesses in China or an internship with a startup in Silicon Valley. This forum helps current award holders recalibrate their own personal development plans, and go on to test their ideas with other award holders who may be a year or two ahead of them, either through face to face discussion during the weekend or subsequently via LinkedIn and email contacts shared at the event.

Sunday morning sees each cohort group back at ‘work’ in another set of interactive group sessions followed by a career planning Q&A session with ELS alumni and SMFs before heading off shortly after lunch.

Getting involved
The level of volunteer time commitment required for the ELS scheme is entirely flexible. I started by supporting interview panels and then extended my involvement by supporting, and then delivering activities within the training weekend. I have mentored a number of ELS awardees and through my company Libertine FPE we have on one occasion provided an internship.

Although there is certainly value in having individual SMFs support any one aspect of the ELS scheme, I’ve found that participation in both the selection and training events has some synergistic benefit, with the training weekend highlighting the impact of scheme and the calibre of current and past award holders, and the selection event providing a first introduction to future award holders.

So, what do I perceive to be the benefits of the ELS scheme, and getting involved?  The media often highlights the UK’s skills gap, but the ELS programme demonstrates that UK universities are producing some very high calibre graduates. Apart from the opportunity to share my MBA and career experience with ELS award holders (possibly future SMF scheme applicants – many ask about the right time to study for an MBA) – mixing with the brightest talent also brings new insights about my own career and engineering business.

It’s also helped me to understand the processes and influences through which undergraduates decide on their engineering path, their career aspirations, what impact they want to have on society and their decisions about taking a job with a blue-chip engineering firm or a start-up business.

Taking part in the ELS training weekend also provides time for reflection. I am very conscious that in my choice of career at Libertine, I have deliberately chosen to focus on building a company that could help address the global challenges of our generation at the intersection of population growth, resource consumption, energy and climate change.

It’s a finely balanced one because the world is facing unprecedented and urgent climate and resource crises that loom larger each day. Pessimistic media headlines can add to the impression that politics will be too slow to react, that national action will be too limited to be effective and that the challenge is likely to be insurmountable. The Royal Academy of Engineering ELS events are the perfect antidote to this sort of fatalism. Mixing with 300 or so of these stellar new engineers, all energised by the idea of bringing engineering solutions to bear these big challenges, and realising that this is not unique, that all over the world millions of scientists and engineers are graduating each year to join the fray, I get a renewed sense of shared purpose and technology optimism.

How you can help
James Raby has played an important role in supporting ELS selection process and delivering several of the group sessions in the ELS training events over many years. James has also helped build awareness of the ELS scheme and the essential supporting role of SMFs. His tragic death last year leaves a gap that must be filled.

My hope is that a handful of SMF volunteers can get involved in the Engineering Leadership Scholarship programme, helping the RAE to develop the next generation of engineering leaders. The most urgent priority is to provide continuity of SMF support to help define and deliver the October 2019 training weekend, and ensure that this is a success.

In future, I hope that SMFs will continue to play an important role in the ongoing development and delivery of the ELA scheme. It has been a great experience for me. If you would like to know more and join a meeting with the RAE in August to help plan the October 2019 training weekend, please email cathy.breeze@smf.org.uk.

Blog

What are Pros and Cons of the Sharing Economy?

The sharing economy is an idea that is very much present in the zeitgeist, but many of us don’t really have a comprehensive understanding of exactly what it is and where it came from. Whatever your level of understanding, the sharing economy is going nowhere, so taking a little look at it and its potential triumphs and pitfalls can’t hurt.

What Is the Sharing Economy?
The acceleration of digital technology kicked off by the birth of the internet’s universal accessibility has birthed many a new concept. The growth of the sharing economy is one of those concepts. Sometimes referred to as collaborative economy, this economic model is defined by the sharing of personal assets and services between individuals using the internet. It allows people to share their own resources, whether material or skills-based, either in kind or in exchange for money or incentives.

The assets that you offer can be anything from your time to your car or even your home; for use by another person for a limited time period.  A famous example of a platform that depends on this model is Airbnb, the site/service that allows you to rent your home/property for temporary use. This economic model spans many sectors including technology, communication, lodging, agriculture, labour and finance. It is hugely popular for several reasons, one of the utmost being its flexibility.  The exchange of services can be agreed upon under any terms; one may ask for financial payment in return, but social and environmental based exchanges are also popular.

The sharing economy is essentially the closest thing we now have to the old tradition of bartering. There is a lot of confusion about what exchanges this economy refers to, as there are a lot of new economic models out there with which to get it confused. Here is a quick summary on just some of the economic models that the shared economy is not…

Gig Economy. Single projects or jobs for which a worker is employed. There is no skill or asset sharing here, it is a worker being employed in exchange for money in order to carry out a specific job.

Freelance Economy. Similar to the gig economy, except that jobs or projects tend to be more involved, in-depth and longer in length (sometimes lasting months or even years).

Peer Economy. Or P2P for short. This is where two individuals directly interact to buy or sell goods and services.

Crowd Economy. This refers to money making models such as crowdfunding or crowdsourcing; this generally results in an online community of people who participate with each other through a platform in order to achieve a single goal.

Now let’s look at some of the arguments for and against the sharing economy…

PRO: Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose
It is a great way to avoid waste. If you have an item or resource that you are not using quite as much as you used to, this model offers a great way for you to loan their use to others. You can not only make money out of something that you are not currently using, but you can also offer another person access to what they need for a reasonable, non-commercial price. Most importantly though, it prevents possessions and assets from going to waste.

CON: Scam Threats
One of the issues with this system is that buyers are more open to fraud and trickery, as there is no real protection against this kind of situation occurring. All you have to go on, with regards to the person you are dealing with, is their promise and the apparent character they present. Protection against this is slowly getting better, but the speed at which technology advances can make this kind of issue hard to regulate.

PRO: Opportunity
In a world where getting a job is increasingly difficult, many doors seem to be closed, and innovation appears to be very expensive, this economy gifts pretty much anyone with the opportunity to turn a dime, or simply be more productive.  It means that individuals can set their own terms, their own hours and have the flexibility to make their lives work for them.  It invites communication between individuals, which creates community, diversity, interesting ideas and ultimately brings people together. The presence of this economy offers liberation for those who are prepared to get into it.

CON: Lack of Benefits and Lost Revenue
Individuals who earn their full living in this economy do not have access to the benefits that those working for a company do. The benefits might include sick leave, pension schemes, maternity/paternity leave and bonuses. It can also impact on the success of other businesses. A famous example of this is the impact that Uber has had on the traditional taxi hailing services.

PRO: Employment
Unemployment is always an issue, but this economy goes some way to making a positive dent. Not only are there more jobs available because of the rise of companies such as eBay and Amazon (in many cases, these are jobs that can be performed from home), but the sharing economy offers a platform from which to advertise on a global scale. If you make ornaments, for example, you can access an entire global market, which is a huge change from the artisan and small business landscape of only a decade ago.

CON: Tax
As the laws around claiming financial gain from online platforms are not that tight yet, governments report a loss in tax revenue. Just like any economic model, there are arguments as to its success, fairness and validity on both sides. But one thing is for sure, like it or not, the sharing economy is here to stay! Where do you stand?

 

Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash

Blog

Behavioural Science: Who Decides What We Buy?

Who decides what we buy?  It’s a chicken and egg debate.

Innovation, improvement and creation of products and services are produced, on the face of it, for the benefit of the consumer. We assume that, in general, these products and services are created to cater to a supply and demand situation, or to solve a problem. However, one of the biggest influences on what is put on the market is based on the findings of various strands of behavioural science. Although this approach was initially designed to find out what demographic groups want, the competitive nature of so many markets has many people wondering if this technique is now commonly being used to manipulate consumer behaviour rather than reflecting consumer demand.

So, you see, chicken and egg; do the products and companies serve the consumer, or do the consumers serve the products and companies? Marketing, business, consumer demand, profit, trend-setting… there are many issues and phrases banded around with this issue. The fact is, within business profit is the main goal. As we have seen, many huge businesses, household names such as Woolworths, HMV and the House of Fraser, have fallen foul to the highly competitive consumer market. It could be argued that sometimes customer manipulation is what is required for a business to stay afloat; sometimes consumer satisfaction is not the top priority. Is this acceptable? Let’s delve into the pros and cons of behavioural science a little to help towards a conclusion.

What is behavioural science?
The term ‘behavioural science’ is very broad. It takes ideas, theories and techniques from several fields including, among others, social neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology. These are combined under the umbrella of behavioural science in order to understand the behavioural patterns, buying habits and social dynamics of individuals and larger groups. The results of these studies help to form an understanding of the needs and wants of consumers, and how best to react and ultimately capitalise on them.

How can data gathering be used?
Gathering behavioural data is easy these days. Back in the fifties and sixties, when companies began to gather consumer data in earnest in order to predict where markets were going, their techniques were far more rudimentary. Sales figures, questionnaires, customer feedback… these were the kind of techniques being used. Back then most companies were doing their best to react to the market requirements, what people really needed. However, through the years, as data collection has become more sophisticated, and more intricate consumer patterns have been uncovered, it is not too much of a stretch to steer the market in a direction that benefits the company.

Now, with AI, Google analytics and such, the detection of buying patterns is extremely sophisticated. The data collected includes everything from what people buy, what they look at, how long they spend looking at it, what colours peak their interests, what words they most commonly search for, what sells the best at what time of year and in what location; there is really no behaviour that cannot be detected and tracked.

So, you see, data gathering can be used however a company sees fit. They can either react to your needs and problems, or they can place whatever they have to sell in exactly the right setting in order to look after themselves first. So, the answer to the question ‘how can data gathering be used?’ is, essentially, however you like. The result is down to the ethos, morality and ethics of the business in question.

Targeted marketing
Targeted marketing; breaking down the market into segments (generally demographically determined) and concentrating marketing at the segments that are most likely to gain the company the best results. That makes sense, right? Companies and influencers go where an easy sell is most likely, of course, they do. If, for example, you sell sportswear, you might want to advertise outside a gym or leisure centre. If you sell kitchen appliances, you might want to buy advertising slots around TV cooking programmes. And now companies are employing highly sophisticated and personalised tracking of consumer likes and buying patterns on social media and online shopping and appealing to them individually.  However, this kind of specifically targeted marketing, although present in virtually every industry, walks a fine line between serving the customer and serving the company. In an ideal world, it should do both. But at what point is a company pushing its product onto a demographic that doesn’t need what they are selling, but is determined that they should get on board with it anyway?

Is it healthy to target specific demographics? Considering that advertising must behave differently for each target market in order to get the results it requires, does this perhaps fuel societal and cultural divides?

Innovation vs manipulation
It is tough to innovate. Innovation requires skill, imagination and experience, on a personal skill level. These are tricky enough to find as it is. However, the biggest challenge is time and money. Most of us would like to think of ourselves as innovative; creating solutions to current and potential problems, pushing boundaries and, in a broad sense, making the world a better place to live. That said, this is a much more expensive and resource heavy endeavour than simply flogging something that you know will work, because of behavioural science and its results, for an easy sale. In many cases, to create the opportunity to innovate, capital must be gained by betting on a safe product or service.  In this case, it could be said that a little consumer manipulation is the price that must be paid for truly innovative developments and discoveries.

In this fast-changing world of information and technology, the grey areas are numerous. Often, we don’t have time to sit and reflect on our ethos or aims, or on how fair we are being to everyone, due to a fear of missing the boat, a customer, a trend, or a technological advance. But take a few minutes now… who decides what you buy? And indeed, if you are the seller in this situation, are you an innovator, a manipulator, or a bit of both?

Press Releases

Engineers in Business Prize for Imperial College London’s Pioneering Women

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Engineers in Business Fellowship recently became a proud supporter of We Innovate, a women’s entrepreneurship programme run by Imperial Enterprise Lab which inspires and accelerates the progress of women entrepreneurs.  At the final held during Enterprise Month 2019, five finalists battled it out to win a share of a £30,000 prize pot, sponsored by BP.

For the first time, the Imperial Enterprise Lab incorporated an Engineers in Business Prize of £3,000 into We Innovate, enabling it to make additional awards.  Two prizes, funded by Engineers in Business Fellowship, were awarded to outstanding engineering projects from the WE Innovate cohort.

Sophie Paisley-Marshall (PhD Student Sustainable Civil Engineering) of Orbit Materials received £1,500 prize for the development of carbon-negative construction materials from waste residues. Orbit Materials promotes a circular economy through the development of a treatment which successfully improves the quality of a waste product so that it can be repurposed within construction applications.  Sophie said, “Our technology reduces the strain on virgin raw materials whilst capturing carbon, thus making our residues carbon negative.”

The second £1,500 prize was awarded to semi-finalist Lauren Dowling (Undergraduate Design Engineering) of Rock N Roll which is developing a collapsible log-fence to prevent rotational falls in equestrian cross-country competitions.

Professor Maggie Dallman, Vice President (International) and Associate Provost (Academic Partnerships), said: “The lack of gender equality in the startup world is well documented. In the UK, only 1% of venture capital invested goes to all women-founded teams, with 89% going to teams founded entirely by men. Clearly, we still have a big problem.

“Since 2014, WE Innovate has supported more than 250 women, equipping them with the skills and confidence they need to develop into successful entrepreneurs. It is wonderful to see this community of female student entrepreneurs grow and the fantastically diverse nature of their inventions.”

SMF James Diaz-Sokoloff, Portfolio Advisor (Intern) at BP who is pictured with Sophie and Lauren said: “It’s exciting to see the dynamism and creativity of the We Innovate competitors and it was a privilege to be at the final.  We are delighted to be part of We Innovate which is doing such an important job in encouraging women’s role in innovation.”

You can learn more about the Engineers in Business prize fund for university enterprise competitions here.

Press Releases

£70,000 Awarded to Universities for Enterprise Competitions  

Engineers in Business Fellowship (EIBF) inspires engineering students, graduates and postgraduates to engage with their entrepreneurial instincts.

EIBF works with universities that run enterprise competitions, providing them with a £3,000 prize fund so that they can encourage more engineers to participate in their business competitions and to reward those who develop the most imaginative and viable solutions to real problems.

The EIB prize fund was successfully piloted at the University of Nottingham and then rolled out to the University of Bristol, Kingston University and City, University of London with great success.  These early successes led to Lord Sainsbury’s charitable trust, The Gatsby Foundation, granting Engineers in Business Fellowship £700,000 to fund more HEI/FEI  competitions over a three-year period.

The expanded prize fund got off to a flying start with 23 universities awarded a £3,000 prize fund – more than £70,000 awarded and there is more to come.

“The expansion from four to 23 universities integrating EIB prizes within their enterprise competitions shows the appetite for the fund and its value to the universities.  In 2019, we want to award a further 25 universities and FE colleges a share of  £75,000,” said EIBF President, David Falzani MBE.

Paula Gouldthorpe, Entrepreneurship Manager at the University of Hull which recently received a prize fund said: “Our Global Challenge is a module dedicated to all our 2nd year engineering students. This year, 300 students, creating 50 interdisciplinary groups of engineers, will solve current real-world problems.  The Engineers in Business competition prize crucially helps highlight the importance of enterprise, entrepreneurial thinking and business acumen of our future engineers – encouraging them to look beyond their technical capabilities.  The prize fund provides students with the additional inspiration; for the University it builds upon the careers and entrepreneurship links with our Science and Engineering Faculty and I am hopeful too of some fresh, innovative solutions for social, economic and environmental change.”

Kate Beresford, Head of Membership and Operation, Enterprise Educators UK commented on the EIBF funding: “Our member universities find enterprise competitions to be a really effective way to inspire students, graduate and postgraduates to consider enterprise and entrepreneurship. But funding can be a massive challenge, so we welcome the Engineers in Business Prize Fund and look forward to seeing a wealth of innovative engineering solutions come forward.”

A TASTE OF ENGINEERING INNOVATION 

The Engineers in Business Prize Fund has already generated fascinating ideas from teams that comprise engineering students, graduates and postgraduates and here are just two:

Lancaster University – The ‘Quench Spike Free Cup’: The top team in Lancaster University’s competition created the ‘Quench Spike Free Cup’ which is designed to alert the owner if their drink has been spiked or tampered with. The plastic cup uses coloured detection strips within plastic cups to warn of this. As first prize winner the team received £1,750 and a business mentor from the Sainsbury Management Fellowship to support them as they move forward to develop the product and test prototypes.   

The remainder of Lancaster University’s £3,000 prize fund went to 2nd prize winner Buddyup; a sports app that would allow users to find sports companions at similar levels of skills and 3rd prize winner Tech Test, a  service where users can test new technology over short trial periods before committing to buy their own devices.

City, University of London: E-Mobility Bike: First prize went to a hybrid sharing bicycle system, called E-Mobility Bike, a lightweight half manual and half electric bicycle designed to make city travel easier, healthier and more accessible. Unicorn Electrics, the team behind it, has already secured pilot locations to trial the system and have used the EIB cash prize to perfect their product.

The incentive of the EIB prize fund has enabled City, University of London to increase the level of participation by engineers in its competition by 114%.

Alex Elkins, Head of Entrepreneurship at the university said: “The launch of our EIB competition resulted in an impressive jump in the quality and number of business ideas entered by our engineering students. The EIB support has been instrumental in launching this dedicated award within our broader innovation competition. We are very happy to have had the opportunity to establish this partnership!”

For details on how to apply for an Engineers in Business Prize Fund visit our competitions page or contact us at EngineersinBusiness@smf.org.uk.

 

 

Blogs & News

Government Regulation and Today’s Tech Giants: How Far Should They Go?

There have been several points in our recent history whereby a new innovation or technology has come hurtling towards us, but debate and regulation on these advances don’t come to fruition until they are engrained into our daily lives. One of the best examples of this is the motor car. By the turn of the 20th century, owning your own motor car, although a reserve of the wealthy, was not especially uncommon. It wasn’t until nearly two decades later that the first road sign came along and that serious conversations were being had about safety, necessity and regulation.

Technology is inside our lives. We depend on digital technology in virtually every arena of life, whether it be shopping, doing our jobs, navigation, entertainment, communication… technology plays a huge part. This puts a lot of power in the hands of those who own and develop the technology that is now so integral to our modern existence. Of course, regulation and debate have been part of this landscape for quite some time, so long in fact that we, the public, and the lawmakers, government organisations, are starting to fatigue.  Technology has been moving so fast for so long, and the regulatory bodies have been trying to catch up before the next advance, that tech firms are, arguably, starting to break away.

Laws and regulation are key to the way society works and the tech giants that now hold so much power should be held within some kind of regulatory structure, but to what extent? How important is it to strap laws on to our technology? Should these big technology innovators be allowed to have the power that they currently seem to wield? Will over regulation stunt innovation and development? It’s a big subject, with many sides to it and many strong arguments to back them up. However, let us explore just a few of the ideas surrounding this, to help inform the arguments around this important global discussion.

GDPR and Trust
One of the largest, if not the largest concern around modern digital technology hinges around trust. Can we trust the internet and the people who hold the keys? The fear that many people have really stems from the fact that large companies are not generally perceived as entirely trustworthy. This is not surprising, as although technology is generally developed to improve our lives, the main aim of a company is to make profit.

Personal data was being mistreated in many cases, which led to the introduction of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in 2017. The main purpose of this was to, essentially, put some control back into the hands of consumers, and less so the tech companies. This legislation has been effective in making companies treat personal data more carefully, and in increasing transparency about how they use information. This accountability seems to be beneficial to all on the whole, but has it stunted innovation and company growth significantly?

Tech Company Power and Necessary Privacy Violation
This issue is littered with grey areas. Of course, we should be the owners of our own personal data and should have power over where that information goes and who uses it. However, let’s take an incident from 2016; the FBI approached Apple in 2016 to attempt to unlock a convicted terrorist’s phone. This phone had been programmed to delete all data after ten failed password attempts. Apple refused to comply due to company policy. Who was in the right in this case? Well, there are, again, strong arguments on both sides. The issue here is that neither the FBI nor Apple were legally in the wrong; which tells us that the power of tech giants is very real and not to be underestimated.

Limiting Growth
The problem that many technology companies have with regulation, and indeed the potential for ‘over-regulation’ is that it has the ability to significantly stunt growth and innovation, or even halt it altogether. The thought is that, with the altercations and debates currently flaring up between the government, the public and the companies themselves around many legal, ethical and restriction issues, overly compensatory legislation will be passed. That is, in order to ‘get ahead’ of the rapid advances happening in the industry, unnecessarily drastic and stringent laws may be passed in order to give the government time to catch up. This may help to redress the power balance, but it might also prevent new ideas and developments from breaking through.  

Intellectual Property
The once distant idea of artificial intelligence (AI) is now very much a reality. With self-learning tech and AI being a large part of our global technology platforms, the lines between who owns what are becoming increasingly blurred. This not only has potential pitfalls when it comes to legal issues but also the ability for technology to learn, independent of human input, which could lead to the acquisition of personal data on a huge scale. This may be a place where strong legislation is vital.

The essential question with all of this is: ‘is our technology safe and fair?’ This, through lawmaking and legislation, has always been the government’s aim with new, culture-shifting technology. However, the speed at which technology now advances makes this pursuit very tricky indeed. Yes, rules and regulations should be present, but to what extent? Do the cons of the current technological power balance between businesses and governing bodies outweigh the pros?

What do you think?

Press Releases

Concept for Lower Cost Bionic Arms Wins Edinburgh University’s Engineers in Business Prize

The LAUNCH.ed Team at Edinburgh Innovations, University of Edinburgh, launched its first dedicated Business Ideas Competition for engineering students to inspire them to develop business innovations, with cash prizes provided by Engineers in Business Fellowship.  The Engineers in Business Prize was created to encourage more engineering students, graduates and postgraduates to get involved in business innovation early in their studies/careers.

The top Engineers in Business prize was awarded to the Augment Bionics team which developed the idea of designing and manufacturing affordable and functional bionic arms for use by amputees and people born without upper limbs. The winning team comprised four students – George Dzavaryan (Mechanical Engineering with Management), Moritz Muller (Chemistry), Iman Mouloudi (Neuroscience) and Will Saputra (Sociology and Quantitive Methods).

The Augment Bionics team was presented with a £500 cash prize at the event, How to Win at Business Competitions, which was co-hosted by LAUNCH.ed and the University of Edinburgh Entrepreneurship Club.  The event was designed to help the 60 attendees learn more about strategies for winning business competitions and included a host of entrepreneurs including Denny Schenk as the Climate-KIC Entrepreneur in Residence and Lorenzo Conti, Founder of Crover and winner of last year’s Business Ideas Competition.  As part of the prize, the members of Augment Bionics can also avail themselves of a Sainsbury Management Fellow as a mentor.

George Dzavaryan, Technical Director of Augment Bionics, said: “Applying to the competition was an easy process, especially with a project that was already several months in the making. We had developed a more mature vision for the future and had some results to show for our hard work. Winning first place was a nice surprise for us, as I’m sure it will be for future contestants. The £500 cash prize has been spent well on purchasing electrical components for the first version of the bionic prosthetic and to buy a domain for our website. It definitely gave us a much-needed kick start early on in the academic year, which is important for many student-led projects since it is a period of time when they are not as busy and can dedicate more time to projects like ours.”

Arthur Chee

There were also second and third Engineers in Business prizes: Arthur Chee, a postgraduate student studying Mechanical Engineering and Dilyana Karavasileva (Informatics), were awarded £300 for their idea of developing a robotic strawberry harvesting arm that is more efficient and less bulky than existing designs in development.  The design improvements would be achieved through greater degrees of freedom and an internal conveyor belt system.

Dileep Dasari

In third place was Dileep Dasari, second year undergraduate student at the School of Engineering, who created DASSUN (patent pending), an easy and cost-effective vortex generating system which can potentially decrease fuel consumption of Turbofan engines by up to 10%.  Dileep was awarded £200 cash prize.

Teodora Handrea, Enterprise Executive, University of Edinburgh said, “The Engineers in Business prize has been a phenomenal success. Run in parallel with the university’s established Business Ideas Competition, the two competitions attracted 81 entries from teams of students and alumni, with the Engineers in Business Prize stimulating 45 entries from the College of Science and Engineering and 24 entries from the School of Engineering.  Overall, we have seen a 137% increase in the total number of entries to both competitions from the College of Science and Engineering, and over 600% increase from the School of Engineering.”

LAUNCH.ed is now working with all other competition entrants to offer further assistance to develop their ideas through workshops and one-to-one support with a business advisor.

LAUNCH.ed will be running the Engineers in Business prize alongside its general Business Competition again this year and in 2020 and is aiming to encourage even more engineering students, graduates and postgraduates to participate and develop creative solutions to real problems.   LAUNCH.ed will again be supported by an Engineers in Business Prize Fund.

 

Press Releases

Engineering Student wins £1,000 for Cybersecurity Business

Engineers in Business supports City, University of London’s CitySpark business ideas competition which is open to students and recent alumni.

A special category, MakerSpark, was created to recognise the innovations created by engineering students, and this element is supported by a £3,000 EIB prize fund.

The CitySpark competition focusses on finding problems, identifying real gaps in the market and building evidence-based start-ups from day one.  CitySpark places a core focus on encouraging students to ‘get out of the building’, meet target customers and develop a full understanding of the problem to be solved. This provides an excellent starting point for brilliant ideas to develop into fully-fledged business ventures.  The competition is split into two challenges taking place throughout the academic year to help students develop entrepreneurial skills and launch a business.

The MakerSpark prize covers the two challenges and we are delighted to announce that Alien Security, a new cybersecurity consultancy, has won £1,000 in the first challenge.

Alien Security, which already has clients, provides ethical hacking services for the purpose of finding security vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could potentially exploit.

Founder and CEO, Noor Alrayes, who is studying the  MSc Cyber Security course said: “Cybersecurity is not only a technology problem but also a people problem, which is why we offer cybersecurity support to clients and tailor our services to their needs”

Working with clients, Alien Security causes ‘serious chaos’ testing IT environments and physical cybersecurity to maximise cybersecurity defence.

We will be back later in the year to update on the final winner of the MakerSpark prize in the grand final!

case studies

Billy Comes to Life Through Engineering and Business Talent

With a childhood love of maths and a passion for engineering as he grew up, there was only one direction in which Rob Deeming’s career path could travel, and it is a path that has led him to found a software business set to revolutionise the care sector. Rob knew that the key to career progression was in expanding his horizons via business education, and winning a Sainsbury Management Fellows (SMF) MBA scholarship opened avenues that would, otherwise, have not been available.

Before business school, Rob gained a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Nottingham. “I always loved maths growing up,” says Rob, “and as I started thinking about university, I was eager to find a practical outlet.” Upon leaving university, Rob needed a little time to decide which direction he wished his career to take, and so spent five years as a consultant at global management consultancy firm, Bain & Company. Throughout his time there, Rob was able to fine-tune disciplines; working through practical skills such as problem-solving and collaborative working; giving him a platform on which he could consider a range of exciting careers.

Rob says, “There have been times during my career when I have been closer to engineering than others, but my degree has given me tools that have helped me in every professional situation. My background in engineering has always meant a foundation in process, structure, and a keen interest in using first principles to solve problems.”

Working at Bain gave Rob the time and freedom to decide what he wanted to do longer term. As Rob says, “It was the classic non-choice coming out of university; as it turns out, it was an incredible place to start a career. The level of learning, skills development and personal support available in consulting is second-to-none – I have never experienced anything like it since. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had that experience.”

Winning the SMF scholarship made a huge difference to Rob; offering opportunities that otherwise would not have been available. “I chose not to take sponsorship from my employer; studying a two-year program in the US amounts to a considerable expense. The scholarship really helped ease some of the burden while at business school, and most importantly in the years since, as I have been paying down by business school loans. On top of this, the scholarship gave me the freedom to really go after the entrepreneurial career path I wanted.”

The MBA gave Rob professional and personal perspective; giving him the opportunity to travel to the US to work, and opening his eyes to brand new career pathways he had not previously considered, in particular, those which combined his engineering and business skills. Since graduating, Rob has spent time living in both New York and Sydney building tech-driven businesses.

Rob agrees that there is often an image issue surrounding engineers, but he feels strongly that the limited image of engineering is changing, particularly as many organisations are now working to educate the public, and young people, on the variety, diversity and excitement a career in engineering can bring.

Rob says, “Today I run a software business and I love that our software development team identify as engineers. I believe that the world now clearly recognises that engineering forms the building blocks of future development, not just a retrospective understanding of the past.”

Rob would encourage young people to choose engineering as a profession, quoting the value it has had for him in building an incredible foundation from which any number of professional directions are possible.

With an MBA under his belt, Rob built and sold three start-ups from his base in New York, and most recently has set to work developing technology that would address the fundamental challenges of caring for seniors, while allowing them to remain in their own homes as independently as possible, on their own terms. Billy was born. Rob explains, “Across the world, the lives of seniors are changing every day. For too long, seniors have been seen as a problem to be managed, rather than simply as consumers with needs to be met.”

Billy was founded with the objective of addressing the fundamental challenges that seniors face when trying to maintain their independence in their own surroundings. “We recognised that technology had a role to play in helping seniors feel confident, and giving families peace of mind,” Rob explains, “we put Billy into testing and pilot eighteen months ago.

Billy uses a series of IoT sensors to identify patterns of behavioural routine for seniors, and share this information through an app, in real time, with family members and professional carers.” Billy uses no cameras or wearables; it is an entirely passive kit, which requires little user input. It can read all the activities of daily living, including knowing when someone is eating; taking medications; leaving the house; and rising from and going to bed, using smart analytics to determine patterns in routine and identifying changes before they result in medical emergency.

The focus when developing Billy was on prevention, rather than reacting to an emergency. Recognising that the newest technology is not always the best solution to a customer’s true problem; the team at Billy will often forego the latest innovation to deliver an improved customer experience.

The future is exciting for both Rob and his company; Billy is growing in both size and reputation, being in almost 1,000 homes across Australia and the US. Initial feedback shows that customer confidence is high (receiving a NPS score of 58 which is regarded as excellent), and there has been a reduction in hospitalisations in the households where Billy is installed.

Rob attributes the success of Billy to the commitment and hard work of the whole team and particularly to the talent of the software developers who have “built a market-defining product that is having material impact on one of the major social issues of our time.”

Emphasising the positive combination of having both engineering and business skills, Rob says, “A good understanding of the hardware and software design and its capabilities, and limitations, have been very helpful to me.” The needs of his customers are the cornerstone of what Rob does; guiding the development of Billy, and keeping his team cohesively aligned behind their goals.

Rob values the five years spent in a non-engineering role prior to his MBA; he sees it as having the space to think and work out what he wanted from his career and his studies, something not everyone gets to do. And his advice to engineers with a desire to become entrepreneurs?  Keep engineering: “Engineers make great entrepreneurs – they are practical, problem-solvers and they recognise the value of building strong, multi-disciplinary teams.” Rob says. “The next generation of great businesses will be built on increasingly complex technology and engineering principles. That puts newly graduated engineers in a very strong position to pursue an entrepreneurial path.”

case studies

From Cambridge to Jordan – Bridging the Gap Between Technical Education and Industry Demands

SMF Nick Sullivan, co-founder and managing director of Heritage Independent Living, is one of many Sainsbury Management Fellows at the forefront of initiatives that help business and industry grow and thrive.

Nick was recently invited to give a presentation at the Amman Chamber of Commerce in Jordan on an innovative Roadmapping project that he is leading on behalf of Cambridge University Institute for Manufacturing (IfM). The project is funded by the Newton Khalidi Fund and administered by the Royal Academy of Engineering, which also administers the Sainsbury Management Fellows scholarship of which Nick was a beneficiary enabling him to study for an  MBA at INSEAD.

“The Newton Khalidi Fund is being used to establish a Roadmapping capability at the Al Hussein Technical University (HTU), which was established by Jordan’s Crown Prince Foundation.  HTU provides excellent, rigorous and industrially-relevant technical education that enables its graduates to obtain quality employment and to contribute to the development of Jordon’s industry, economy and society. The Roadmapping project bridges the gap between technical education and industry demands,” said Nick, who is now teaching and embedding the fast-track approach to Roadmapping at the university.

Following initial successful workshops, Nick and his colleagues are looking at helping HTU to work directly with industry and particularly with SMEs.

Nick explained: “SMEs all over the world have similar challenges, a pressing one is time constraint.  Typically, the senior members of the team wear multiple ‘hats’, managing many tasks and they have little time to take a step back from the detail of the business to focus on strategic matters.   Their knowledge of available markets and best practice also tend to be limited.  Our intention is to develop the Roadmapping capability at HTU to enable them to use a range of tools and techniques developed by Cambridge University IfM to tackle such challenges.  Many of these tools have already been used extensively within UK SMEs.”

The programme will focus on specific industry sectors.  As Jordan already has a well-developed Computer & Informatics Industry, the next HTU roadmapping workshop will look at other major industry sectors including Energy, Engineering, Technology, Architecture/Civil/Construction, and Manufacturing – the SME tools and techniques are especially pertinent to the manufacturing sector.

HTU’s programme not only develops the fast-track roadmapping capability, Nick and his team are delivering advice and support.  Initially, Nick and his team will train HTU practitioners at Cambridge University; they will then work with SMEs with HTU personnel shadowing them, and then HTU will work directly with SMEs with Nick providing support as and when needed.

“We are all very excited about the potential of HTU’s educational programme and we believe it will have significant trickle down effects on the growth of small businesses and the economy in the coming years.”