It might seem a little odd that one of the first things I was asked to do as Futurist-in-Residence at the Entrepreneurship Centre at the Business School was to look backwards. But considering where things have come from can be a useful prelude to prediction. Familiarising oneself with the origin of things, sketching both the… Read more
Our world has changed so much since COVID first emerged a year ago, that it’s often difficult to remember life pre-pandemic. This is especially true if you are one of the four million UK knowledge workers who now works from home. Many are convinced that remote working has advantages for both employer and employee alike,… Read more
Owen Thompson, an alumnus of Wolfson College and Xavier Parkhouse-Parker, an alumnus of Homerton College, discuss how they met whilst studying at Cambridge Judge Business School. Now they are working together to grow two exciting ventures. How did you meet and what were you working on at the time? Xavier: We first met during our… Read more
My name is George, a fourth year PhD student based at the University of Cambridge Crop Science Centre, and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB). I’m interested in the diversity and abundance of symbiotic microorganisms in agricultural systems, quantified with a mixture of metagenomic and microscopic approaches. I have projects running from the national… Read more
By Social Starts Managing Partner Mike Edelhart Now, as Shakespeare said, is the winter of our discontent. Covid keeps on coming, creating a third wave of infections that put the earlier upswells to shame. We are hunkered down, tired out, fed up, and strung out. People fret and businesses suffer. What is an entrepreneur (last… Read more
What are some of the challenges in healthcare innovation that need to be addressed? The healthcare sector presents a unique set of challenges for innovation. These include a requirement for prolonged validation trials, complex regulation, ethical considerations, and a highly trained workforce to tackle the issues we face. The challenge is in aligning incentives so… Read more
Charco Neurotech is a medical technology startup dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with long term health conditions. In 2013 we met a gentleman who said “I am very happy now but I look angry because Parkinson’s disease took away my smile”. Since then, our aim has been to bring smiles back… Read more
The world is complex and mental models help us simplify information, focus on the most important things and make better decisions. Examples include the Pareto Principle which teaches us that in most situations, 20% of inputs lead to 80% of outcomes, so the goal should always be to find and focus on the 20%. Or… Read more
Connect4 is an online meetings platform that helps businesses have smarter meetings. At the end of March our working lives changed overnight, and we’re all still learning to adapt. Not only have we moved from office to home, we’re also trying to renegotiate client and team relationships online – as well as, in some cases,… Read more
What am I doing here? That was my first thought as I looked round a lecture theatre packed with incredibly smart science and business brains. But I had an idea, I wanted to test it and the entry fee was just £60, so here I was on my first Venture Creation Weekend without a clue… Read more