In the spirit of practicing what it preaches, the first project from the University of Bristol’s Runway Programme – where student start-ups take off, was a prototype. Over 24 hours from 1830 on Friday to Saturday evening, 4 teams of students from 3 different faculties battled against the clock to solve-real world challenges.
A reflection by Mark Neild, Runway Programme Director:
There were 3 things we wanted to find out:
- How might we go from blank canvas to credible venture in 24 hours?
- How might such an event be organised for and by students?
- How might we attract external input to escape the “university bubble”
Credible ventures?
It was a tense start as relationships, frozen by lockdown learning, slowly thawed and teams started to coalesce around the Design Sprint themes. By 10pm on Friday evening everyone was in a team and planning for a busy Saturday was well underway. Time for a well-earned rest.
The briefs were broad, so much of the early stage of the Sprint was spent narrowing the focus down to something that could be accomplished in next to no time. So many possibilities! Next came the evidence. It is surprising just how much data can be gathered with effective teamwork; one of the winners managed 20 interviews. I hope they signed up at least some of them as future customers. With in-house mentoring provided by members of the Runway team and external mentoring provided remotely, there was plenty of advice, but it was down to the teams themselves to decide what to do. By 3, the time for developing ideas was over and focus shifted to the pitch.
An idea is only as good as your ability to communicate it.
Communicate it they did with colourful slides and no groups waffling over their allotted 10 minutes. At Saturday evening’s Pitch, all 4 ventures were declared to be credible by our panel of judges. Two winners emerged; Boro, a circular economy venture aimed at better using items most of us buy, but seldom use; and Care Families, an insightful way to encourage more young people to work in social care. Not far behind were Hybrid Homes, looking at ways to make home working easier for those stuck in less conducive environments and our final group with an innovative way for corporates to power community improvement schemes.
Not a duffer among them. Tick!
Innovating with rather than for
It is easy to forget that students are our raison d’etre. Entrepreneurship is the ultimate form of empowerment, so why not empower students to organise the event? Afterall they are far better placed to engage their community than crusty old academics – not that the Runway team are academics, we have all been in business. Hannah, a final year student in Psychology with Innovation and president of the Student Innovation Society stepped up to the task admirably. Her team built a Facebook page and set about persuading fellow students to come along. Between us we selected the challenges with a few tweaks here and there to make sure they fitted the 24-hour format. We were not happy with the healthcare brief, so I reached out to Sirona Care and Health. Hannah and I met their transformation director later that week. From a great conversation emerged the very real challenge of staffing in social care.
Hannah learned a huge amount from the experience, an opportunity that might have been lost had the whole thing been done by staff. We made a great team, each bringing complementary strengths.
Student led. Tick!
Together we are stronger
One of the curses of teaching a vocational subject in an academic setting is the lack of domain knowledge that students can draw on. This can result in solving problems drawn from within the university bubble, which neither resonate with future employers nor adequately prepare students for real life. The solution lies in co-production. Strong process and youthful connectedness meeting the constraining influence of experience and overwhelm combine to spark radical solutions grounded in practicality. Care Families is a great example and shows why next time, all the briefs should be set by people outside the university, ideally supplemented by those with lived experience of the challenges being addressed.
The 3 judges were all external, Julie, a transformation director from a local social care provider, James, a growth specialist from Innovate UK and Caroline, from a high-tech Spin-out. Two of these came via BIG. The Bristol Innovators Group (BIG) comprises hundreds of professionals from in and around Bristol with an interest in the practice of innovation. The Innovation Society are members. One of the joys of BIG is that they recognise the potential of young people rather than seeing students as only half-formed adults. Without this relationship, the event would have been far harder.
Here’s to externals bursting the university bubble. Tick!
While agile prototyping is partly about validation, it is mostly about discovery. 3 ticks are great, but knowing why and how is even more valuable as thoughts turn to the next instalment and how we might co-produce the overall design and challenges with partners from the city and surrounds.
There is plenty more learning and impact that we can glean from events like this. All the better for turning Bristol student ventures into the next big thing.
We are indebted to Helen Stock and her team for keeping us on the straight and narrow path of university compliance, James Snelgrove, Rob Sheffield and Charlie Widdows of BIG for in front and behind the scenes support respectively. Julie Sharma and Janet Rowse from Sirona Care and Health, Cat Stevens and Caroline Clark for getting amongst the chaos and Sue Cole from Runway for being a pillar of strength throughout. Last but not least, thanks to the students for placing their faith in the experiment and agileering Ltd for sponsoring the event so that it cost the university nothing.