Honeypot
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 10:16:00 BST
On Monday 7 October, Stefan Gabriel, President of 3M New Ventures and a University of Huddersfield Visiting Professor, launched Honeypot. Stefan flew into Huddersfield to deliver a special lecture to launch this latest enterprise venture.
The launch event was held in the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre. Honeypot is an inter-school enterprise opportunity exclusively for second year students on specific courses in the School of Art, Design and Architecture and the School of Computing and Engineering. It enables these students to share ideas and recruit students from other courses to help turn their idea into a project.
Stefan, who will be acting as the mentor for the project, delivered a special lecture at the launch event. His presentation opened with a David and Goliath analogy, demonstrating the power of small start-up businesses. He expressed his passion for innovation.
With 80,000 products 3M are continually adding to their portfolio in order to drive growth and innovation, adding in the region of 5,000 new products every year. Stefan's role is to drive 3M’s on-going efforts to identify, acquire and develop new-to-3M technologies and businesses outside of the company’s existing portfolio. Their portfolio includes five market leading business groups covering Industrial, Safety and Graphics, Electronics and Energy, Consumer and Health Care.
He emphasised the importance of working with the right team using different skills which is what the Honeypot project is all about.
Jess Power, Director of Teaching and Learning, School of Art Design & Architecture followed Stefan with a talk about the Honeypot project and the exciting opportunities available to these students.
(Jess Power is pictured from left with Liz Towns-Andrews, Stefan Gabriel and Kelly Smith)
Once all the Honeypot project ideas have been submitted the students will then be able view them all and opt to join those that they are interested in working on. Alongside working on a project, students will also be able to vote for projects they like and there is a team prize for the most votes.
Stefan will also be able to keep up to date with the progress of each of the projects, identifying those that he wants to take to market.
Head of Enterprise Kelly Smith concluded the morning’s session with a presentation on the Enterprise Placement Year. Opening with ‘Is a Business Idea Keeping you up at Night?’ and asking for a show of hands for anyone who was passionate about an idea, who wanted to set up their own business or who was interested in freelance work. Kelly quickly identified that the audience was filled with the entrepreneurial spirit that is the University of Huddersfield.
Kelly spoke about the benefits of being your own boss and the huge sense of personal satisfaction and achievement possible with an Enterprise Placement Year. She described the support available from the Enterprise Team including hot desk space in the Duke of York Young Enterprise Centre, market testing opportunities and regular enterprise events.
As well as the Enterprise Placement Year there are many other opportunities with the University’s Enterprise Team, who can be contacted by email: enterprise@hud.ac.uk
The finale of Honeypot will take place in approximately one year’s time with a Dragon’s Den style event when the winning groups will have the opportunity to take part in a boot camp, working with the University’s Enterprise team to further their project.
For more information on Honeypot email: honeypot@hud.ac.uk or call 01484 47(1364). You can also follow what people are saying using #hudhoneypot
