Ideas to Enterprise

Ideas to Enterprise (I2E), a module that supports PhD and post-doctoral researchers to discover their entrepreneurial side.

At University of Sheffield Enterprise we work with academics across faculties to allow all of our students to access an enterprising education through the curriculum. And when we say “all of our students” we mean all, including our doctoral students. In my daily work I frequently ran into people that assume that entrepreneurship and enterprise education is not relevant to PhD students. If enterprise skills include being creative thinkers and problem solvers, working with constraints and achieving outcomes (among others) I am sure that all researchers at the University of Sheffield would say that it applies to them. On the other hand, landing an academic job is often not the goal of our PhD students. Therefore, developing and recognising their enterprising and entrepreneurial skills become particularly useful for their non academic careers.

This autumn the Doctoral Development Programme is offering Ideas to Enterprise (I2E), a module that gives post-graduate students and post-doctoral researchers the opportunity to discover their entrepreneurial side, develop their skills in business planning, finance and marketing as well as team-working, creative thinking and producing effective presentations. I2E is an intensive 7 week course that takes research students and early career researchers through the process of coming up with an idea, developing it into a viable business proposition and pitching it as an enterprise to potential investors. Participants work in cross disciplinary teams to develop a business proposal based upon their research strengths, and there is a cash prize for the team that most impresses the panel of investors, sponsored by the University’s commercialisation partner Fusion IP plc.

This module is a fantastic opportunity for research students to increase their awareness of the importance of ensuring the impact and relevance of their research and enable them to see opportunities to develop their research appropriately.

For more information about the I2E module and to sign up today, please contact Fozia Yasmin at f.yasmin@sheffield.ac.uk, extension 21403.