http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2011/09/07/emerging-students-%e2%80%98top-20-student-alumni-shakers%e2%80%99-nominate-now/ http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2011/09/07/emerging-students-%e2%80%98top-20-student-alumni-shakers%e2%80%99-nominate-now/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 10:50:23 +0000 Joseph Ajilore http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/?p=11916 If you like this post, why not stay updated to our contents as soon as they are published. Subscribe to our RSS Feeds, Facebook Fanpage and Twitter.

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Top 20 Student / Alumni Shakers

Emerging Students is conducting a global search for new and emerging movers and shakers across universities around the world. These will include students/recent alumni rebelling against mediocrity during their time at university and beyond. These individuals however, are not simply people of achievement but of substance and character.

The top 20 movers and shakers feature will seek to identify 20 university student and recent alumni who have shown much potential. This final list will feature students and alumni from a variety of universities around the UK, an authentic representation of highly commendable emerging students alumni across the university graph with a rebellion against status quo expectations and loyalty to no university brand or status.

A panel from Emerging Students and pending partners will decide on a shortlist from which those candidates will be contacted for a short interview and then the final list will be chosen and published in the Emerging Students launch issue.

This will be an annual feature in hope of raising the standard of expectation and aspiration of university students/alumni across higher education community.

The Top 20 finalists will have access to a world of opportunities, including amazing industry placements.

ABOUT EMERGING STUDENTS (ES)

Emerging Students (ES) is a new national/global university news and media company providing reportage on university culture and the real world. With the aim of redefining university culture in the UK, (ES) is a new subculture and expression; students & alumni aspiring to talent, character and knowledge and in doing so defy mediocrity.

Covering anything from emerging entrepreneurs, rogue university policy makers, graduate fashion, Film makers in Peru, alumni shakers to the best place to buy fresh bread for life on campus. (ES) is blend of engaging thought, design, rich culture and tight community.

NOMINATE

To nominate yourself or someone – email top20@emergingstudents.com with NAME, SHORT BIO and contact details!!

KEEP UP TO DATE

Follow @emergingstudent and www.facebook.com/emergingstudents to keep up to date with the latest news on the Top 20 Movers/Shakers.

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Twitter.

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Two university entrepreneurs have recently launched an amazing company with the aim of helping individuals suffering with various allergies, intolerances and conditions.

Jodie Hughes and Mike Bandar, both business studies students studying at the University of Stirling (Jodie) and Aston University (Mike) met during the NACUE conference last year where Jodie pitched the idea of the company, after being impressed by the pitch although he knew the business still needed some improvement, Mike approached Jodie with a proposal of working together and a partnership was formed.

Jodie, who was diagnosed with coeliac as a child has a gluten and wheat intolerance which means she is unable to eat certain things and has to cut a lot of products out of her diet has always wanted to find a way to raise awareness for coeliac sufferers. My Health Cards was the solution

The company, My Health Cards create credit card-sized information cards to help people suffering with various allergies, intolerances and conditions.

Their first card, My Coeliac Card, is focused towards those who have Coeliac Disease.

They have since gone off to win an award from UnLtd and also a Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award of £1,000 which has allowed them to be able to give the My Coeliac Card free of charge to more people who suffer with Coeliac Disease.

They have also secured a distribution deal with Asda stores nationwide which will allow them to give the cards for free to all Asda customers who could benefit from it. Advertising space will be sold on the back of the cards, “We don’t charge our customers for the cards and most of our profit comes from the advertising space we offer on the reverse side of the card”.

The card has been created as an information aid to take to restaurants and cafes in the UK as well as countries that speak French, Spanish and German.

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Twitter.

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Sparks, is the highly anticipated LSE Entrepreneurship Conference, it will welcome students from across the UK and Europe when this Thursday the 11th November, believe it or not it is entirely student-run. It will include lectures, panel discussions and networking sessions.

The Sparks team have organised an impressive variety of speakers, including several LSE alumni. The conference is set to host a rich mix of successful entrepreneurs and businessmen, all leaders in their respective fields. The day includes four keynote speakers and two panel-discussions; main speakers include Edward Wray, the founder and Chairman of Betfair; Lord Karan Bilimoria the founder of Cobra Beer; John Bird MBE, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Big Issue and Mike Clare, the founder of Dreams.

“Our goal is to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs with the successful creation of a major annual event organized by students in cooperation with the LSE Entrepreneurs Society” – Sparks@LSE.

All conference attendees receive a free membership card to the 1eat Student Dining Club, which gives students discounts of up to 50% at hundreds of restaurants in London. Attendees will also be provided breakfast, lunch and refreshments throughout the day and welcome packs filled with freebies.

For further information and to purchase tickets, visit: http://www.sparkslse.com/

The conference is being held at the prestigious Freemason’s Hall. This venue has been the principal meeting place for Freemasons in London for 235 years!

The building has been used recently for the filming of the TV shows Spooks and Hustle and films including: Johnny English, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Sherlock Holmes.

The Sparks team have said that all profits will be donated to the Microloan Foundation which provides women in Sub-Saharan Africa with small loans to help them establish and run their own entrepreneurial businesses.

This is a great event coming up to the end of the year, highly affordable and look at that roster of speakers, YHP hopes to see you there, get your last minute tickets here

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Enjoy the interview

HI Adam, How are you doing today? It’s great to have you on YHP, Can you quickly give us some background information about yourself?

Hi, yes my name is Adam Robinson and I am 24 and one of the co-founders of Plus Minus Design. I am a graduate from the University of Leeds completing a masters in Product Design in June 2009 and originally from Highburton a small village in West Yorkshire close to Huddersfield.

How did you get involved with plus minus design?

I met Henry James, one of the co-founders of Plus Minus Design, on the first day of University, since then we were always a formidable team on our degree course. With Henry having considerable creative design talent, and myself skilled in detailed design and commercialisation, working together we were an unbeatable team. Outside studies we had always talked of establishing a business after university.

This was originally going to be TOFU – a designer/maker business of high-end sustainable furniture. In our final year of University however we worked with several multinational clients on commercial design projects and from their feedback we were convinced to entre into design consultancy. This was when Plus Minus Design was formed.

Why start a business? What inspired or motivated you towards taking that action?

In our third year of university Henry and myself took an opportunity to travel to and Study at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada.

To be honest our main motivation for this was to snowboard between classes however when we arrived there we meet a man who inspired us – Brian Burns. Brian is a leading academic figure in Sustainable design principles and it was under his guidance that we research, co-authored and published a text book on sustainable design – EcoSuss.

This experience, coupled with our already strong design skills gave us the expertise to be world leaders at delivering sustainable innovation. Couple this with the relationship we had established with blue chip design buyers and the decision to establish a business was easy.

You run the company with two other co-founders right? How did you guys meet each other?

That’s right I have already mentioned Henry James who I met on the first day of University. The other co-founder is Thomas Eales. Henry and myself met Tom during our final year of studying a Masters in Product Design at the University of Leeds.

Do you think running the business with two other people has helped your business grow or even helped you guys individually?

Most defiantly. One of the reasons we went into business together was because of our complimentary skill sets. Henry is one of the most talented conceptual designers I have ever met. Tom is excellent with new technologies and emerging innovations and personally I complimented for my analytical business leadership, detailed design for manufacture skills and eye for commercialisation. Working together we have built a highly desirable design service working with world leading businesses all over the world. Individually I doubt we could be any more then junior designers.

Let’s take a step back a bit, can you tell a bit about what your company does and what role you play in the business?

Plus Minus Design provides disruptive innovation that maximises social impact and minimises environmental impact– (Plus Minus – You can see where the name comes from now!) What that means is that we provide product ideas that truly change market places. A good example is the apple Ipod, that completely changed the personal music market forever or the Dyson vacuum cleaner that did the same in home cleaning.

This is the type innovative, market-leading design we practise. We couple this with an expert knowledge of environmental principles to minimise impact and maximise on the social and financial benefits.

Personally I am Managing Director of Plus Minus Design and provide both business leadership and project management. I am then supported by Henry in creative design and corporate relationship and Tom in technology and marketing.

What value does your company add to the environment and society?

With the risk of making gross generalisations, many people preaching sustainability are focused on the reduction of consumption – using and buying less. This concept while based on admirable ethics is in itself unsustainable. We live in a global economy that is tied to the consumption of goods and products and have a global economy expanding faster every day.

For people to maintain a good level of living we have to have more consumption not less. This leaves us with one option – improving what we buy. That’s where we come in.

I love products and I love buying the latest gadgets and I’m sure the vast majority of us are the same. For this reason we preach more of the same but better. Every product we design is focused on the improvement of people’s lives while minimising the impact it causes. Zero impact in product design is some way off but we promise zero unnecessary impact.

What would you say was key in getting you guys off your feet, starting this business?

It goes without saying that our expertise and experience with multinational clients was high beneficial. That considered however I would say the key was hard work and determination couple with an excellent support network from the university, our contacts and government schemes. At times in the first 6 months the motivation to keep going was hard to find and we had many setbacks but having a team for three people at least on of use was always in a position to re-motivate the other two and keep driving things forwards.

How were you able to get funding for your business?

The majority of funding for our business was provided by ourselves and a grant from Leeds Universities start-up agency – SPARK.

What role did going to the university have on you guys starting a business? What help and assistance did they make available?

When we started and throughout the history of the business the University of Leeds have been very supportive providing business set-up guidance, proving us with business contacts and support on funding. These services were all provide through the universities business start-up program – SPARK who assistance especially in the early stages was invaluable.

From a commercial aspect they have provided us with contracts from both their own clients and themselves. In addition to this we are regularly invited to high profile networking events operated for Leeds University associates.

What is your aim, what are you looking to achieve with plus minus design?

The aim for Plus Minus Design is to be world leaders at delivering disruptive innovation with a studio presence in Australia, Europe, South Africa and North America. In addition to this however we aim to have a portfolio of world leading product innovations that we have designed and launched for ourselves not just clients, one of which is the Solar Pebble.

So tell us about solar pebble? What was the inspiration behind it?

The Solar Pebble was actually inspired by a fact we heard. “1 person in developing nations dies every 20 seconds from the use of kerosene lighting” that statistic by itself is staggering however after a bit of research we found a bit more… over 50% of green house gasses from developing nation is from burning fuels such as kerosene for lighting and cooking.

Kerosene for lighting costs people over £80 every year (that’s over 1/3 of an average families income). Education is significantly restricted due to the inability to read and work at night. Education about AID and other viruses is highly ineffective due to lack of working radios.

With so many green and safe technologies available in the western world this appalled us and we started work on what evolved in to the Solar Pebble. The Solar Pebble offers users a light source that is 10x’s more powerful then a kerosene lantern, is infinitely safer, can power radios and costs just £5! It charges during the day through a small efficient solar panel and provides light in the evening through 9 LED’s and also powers phones and radios.

What are your next steps now for the solar pebble?

Right now we are exploring licensing opportunities with manufactures who can get this product both out to the markets where it is desperate needed and also to Western markets to be sold as a home, camping and festival accessory. We are in a number of negotiations but if any one is interested please contact me.

What should we be expecting from you in the future?

Most of that’s top secret! What I can say is right now we are exploring a number of app’s to help people save power and help them build contacts when starting a business. Also google “Just Add Water from Plus Minus” a product combating the negative impacts of the bottled water industry. If you will pardon the pun, it just made a big splash on the design blogs!

Do you have any tips for young and aspiring entrepreneurs?

If you have an idea that’s not going to put you in jail, just go for it you will never have a better opportunity. Right now most young people have very little to lose and few family restrictions meaning the only way is up! When we started we were heavily in debt from education and nothing to our names. Most people saw this as a restriction and said we needed to work for a few years to get some working capital together. We saw it as an opportunity – with nothing to lose there’s only one direction!

Thanks for your time Adam, good luck!

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Three Kingston post-graduate students (Ana Mikaela, Joe Peach and Sam Mclintock) started their company Tshaped after stumbling upon an idea one evening at their university pub.

After having a quick chat with them on why they wanted to start the business

They said “We were inspired by the love of creating a digital business that would be useful to others and that would make us passionate to work on. Although we were encouraged to create the business by the Masters program, we decided to put our heart and souls in a business that will go much further than a university project”.

The fact that all three come from different business backgrounds also helps;

Ana Mikaela (advertising and communications background and plans the marketing strategy of the company); Sam (industrial design and engineering background) Joe ( conceptual art background, he visualizes and creates ideas, balancing out his team mates with a more creative and artistic approach).

They have since launched their first service from Tshaped called be “Hold the Front Pages.com” A digital newsstand that provides up-to-date view of the front pages of newspapers and magazines.
It allows anyone to browse the front covers with a click of a button. It is a free service that enables quick and easy access to the newsstands.

I also spoke to them about how they are looking to monetize the service;

Our website will be monetized through magazine subscriptions in the initial phase, in the second phase we hope sell advertising space and also sell “tabs” in the website (selling means that the metro might want to pay to have a whole tab called METRO, where people can only see their newspapers).
Another way of getting revenue will be the Sponsored pages, where in a further stage, magazines and or newspapers (or other entitites) can sponsor a page by paying us, which will make that page more prominient in our website and be tagged as “Sponsored page”.

Not bad for a business that the total costs comes up to £250, which i might add is from the bright ideas competition.

I would like to thank Kingston entrepreneurs society for their assistance.

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Picture this – You are in the canteen of your workplace, school, university…etc. You have a tray where you put your food on; suddenly you’re distracted by images on the tray.

So Basically, Adspad is a new advertising tool to help local businesses to target students by using A3 paper placemats in university canteen trays.

Cool Idea, Right??

Who ever thought of such possibility for advertisement being in your face? Yes, we all see it around us everyday via internet or television….however; it has now been bought to us even when we are eating.

Such ideas manifested by Kilian Palop Dorado who is a student from Aberdeen University who is also the president of Adspad. Adspad has just recently been given a Shell Livewire Award in April 2009. His partner in crime for this invention is another student like himself, Glenn Buchan.

As we speak, they are in round two of the New Ventures Competition. These youngster aim high, dream high also are engraved with the intention to make it High.

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The Apprentice Manchester, sponsored by Rolls Royce, is a student competition organised by Manchester Entrepreneurs Society.

www.apprentice-manchester.co.uk

22nd to the 26th of March 2010

First prize will be £1000

Open to all students from the University of Manchester, Salford University and Manchester Metropolitan University

Applications should be done individually, and then individual students will be put into teams.

APPLICATIONS CLOSE 1ST OF MARCH
To apply email your:
- Name
- University
- Student Number
- Course
To : apply@apprentice-manchester.co.uk

We will then hold interviews in the first week of March.

Come and speak to us at MBS East or the University Place Foyer between the 1st-14th of February 11am-4pm

It is the first of its kind to run in the city aimed at young, driven and determined students. Running from the 22nd to the 26th of March 2010, it is a week long event based in and around Manchester University. It will pit only the most driven and focused teams against each other in a series of challenges, ranging from selling products for charity, to hosting and promoting club nights in Manchester.

This week long, intensive programme is open to all students at Manchester, Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as a select number of secondary schools in the Manchester area. First prize will be £1000, and will be presented by at the closing ceremony of the competition on the last day.

This programme is intended to not only provide a week of business-orientated excitement, but also be a talking point for future interviews, as well as looking great on a CV. It will show not only curiosity and competence for innovation and entrepreneurship but also the drive for excellence that many employees feel is missing in the graduating students of today.

For further information, and more details about the challenges, please email us at:
apply@apprentice-manchester.co.uk

WILL YOU BE FIRED?

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Are you interested in enterprise around science, technology, engineering and maths?

Do you want to get the scoop on the latest industry opportunities and trends?

Do you want to develop your enterprise knowledge, skills and network?

The top university students, staff, graduates and researchers – as well as members of the South East enterprise community will come together to get inspired and develop the knowledge, skills, network and experiential opportunities necessary to launch STEM enterprises.

>Who attends?

Students, staff, researchers, graduates, local business professionals, and major corporate partners from any university, discipline, level of study or field of specialization from across the South East region.

>Why attend?

From inspirational speakers and an industry trends panel to practical workshops and experiential business creation, pitching and networking opportunities, delegates will have the opportunity to meet and engage with leading STEM entrepreneurs and develop their network and skills. Engage with Microsoft, BAE Systems, Investors, Leading Academics and Entrepreneurs!

The events feature keynote entrepreneur speakers, an industry tends panel, workshops with NACUE, Business Boffins and Rob Geraghty from the Wow Factor, as well as speed networking and a pitching competition.

All delegates who complete the one day course will receive an Official STEM Enterprise Certificate of Participation and ongoing business and mentorship support from NCGE.

It’s Free!

>Where and When

Oxford (Feb 10)
Reading (Feb 15)
Southampton (Feb 19)
Oxford (Feb 24)
Reading (March
Southampton (March 29)

SPACES ARE LIMITED, SO REGISTER TODAY! http://www.flyingstartonline.com/public/fsworkshops/upcoming

For more information, visit: http://www.flyingstartonline.com/stem and give yourself the leading edge.

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Doug Richard’s School for Startup
Start Here! Starting & Growing a Successful Business
In partnership with B|SEEN & NACUE

On February 8th 2010, Birmingham University will host Doug Richard, serial entrepreneur and original BBC2 Dragon, and the School for Startups team to hold their much esteemed “Start Here! Starting & Growing a Successful Business” masterclass.

About the Event
Doug will be delivering an interactive seminar, incorporating ‘live’ on the day delegate case studies, video examples, lectures, and Q&A sessions.He will provide an insightful introduction to how to succeed in business and address the essential questions that entrepreneurs should ask themselves before investing time and money into an idea:

• How to write the perfect business model
• How to identify your product and your market
• How to start an affordable marketing campaign to increase your sales leads
• How to treat the recession as an opportunity, rather than a threat
• How to make money and secure investment

He’s an entertaining host who will leave you feeling inspired, refuelled and buzzing with new ideas! And yes, you can be coached by him for the day!

Tickets: Register Now! Spaces Limited

The following discounted ticket prices are available via NACUE or one of the
B-SEEN partnership universities; Birmingham, Aston and Birmingham City.

Ticket Type Cost £’s Discount Code

* Students £15 D1
* Academics £20 D2
* Entrepreneurs / Businesses £40 D3
* B|SEEN Students £10 D4

Ticket Booking Link: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/514062575/BSEEN

NB. Proof of student & staff status will be required on the day at registration. Failure to present your valid ID will result in none entry to the event.

You are guaranteed to leave this event with new ideas, enthusiasm and energy!

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The UK’s premier student enterprise conference.

From March 27-28, 2010, UCL Entrepreneurs Society, UCL Enterprise Society and UCL Advances partner with the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs (NACUE) to host the UK’s premier conference for 200 of the most promising student entrepreneurs and enterprising students.

As the country climbs out of the recession, ‘business as usual’ approaches to economic growth will just not cut it. Championing innovation and entrepreneur-led economic growth, this year’s conference, ‘Business NOT as Usual’, brings together investors, policy makers, international corporates and global entrepreneurs, with the objective to not only inspire, inform, connect and provide experiential opportunities to young entrepreneurs, but also to further the discourse, thought leadership and policy awareness around enterprise and innovation to drive the UK economy forward.

Attendees: 200 of the UK’s most promising young entrepreneurs & enterprising students
Location: University College London
Date: 27-28th March, 2010
Fee: £40 early-bird, £50 full price

For full details, the schedule, and instructions on how to register, please visit: www.nacue.com/nsec.

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