Exactly a year ago today the Kent Enterprise Hub was relocated to the Canterbury Innovation Centre and rebranded as HIVE, Hub for Innovation and Enterprise. HIVE, as the institutional support for entrepreneurship, has continued to offer student enterprise activities on both the Canterbury and Medway campuses; and business support to students, alumni and staff looking to start-up their own businesses.

Through 2015-16 146 business advice sessions were held and over 166 students entered entrepreneurial competitions. Alongside this, the HIVE Start-Up Scheme has experienced multiple successes including:

Big Ideas competition
This year 64 students submitted applications and ‘elevator pitch’ videos for the University’s Big Ideas competition. A shortlisting panel of judges then met and selected six student groups/individuals to compete in the final round, where the students pitched their idea to a second panel of judges and answered a Q&A session.

The overall winners of the competition were: Ceseare Dunker, a first year Politics student; and Rayyan Sorefan, a first year Law student. Cesare and Rayyan presented their idea ‘eLog’; an app that allows users to track their journey from A to B. This is done through photographs, geo-tagging and time mapping. The app allows users to provide evidence of their journey to an institution-providing asylum.

Both Cesare and Rayyan will be going to Virginia, USA in August to test their idea against other entrepreneurial students from around the world.

IBM Universities Business Challenge
10 students were selected to form two teams to represent Kent in the IBM Universities Business Challenge. The teams met for two hours weekly and were mentored by the HIVE administrator through a series of simulated challenges.

The two student teams then attended the IBM Universities Business Challenge in London and the teams finished fifth and ninth in the semi-finals. Students feedback that the experience not only improved their entrepreneurial mind-sets but also added to their employability skills; and gave them more to talk about at interviews.

Start-up workshops
This year the University signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce to support HIVE. From this, the Chamber has carried out a series of business start-up workshops in the spring term. These workshops covered: Ideas generation; Sales and Marketing; Finance and Funding; Tax, insurance, and liability; and Creating a business plan.

Conferences
HIVE ran two conferences this year, supported by the Kent Opportunities Fund and Student Project Grant Scheme. The first was the Women in Enterprise Conference, held in November 2015; and the second was the App Development Conference, held in March 2016. Both conferences were well attended by students, staff and local businesses, having a lasting effect on the local entrepreneurial community.

‘Innovation and Enterprise will become more important for everybody in the University, from undergraduate students to senior staff. I am pleased that the Hub for Innovation and Enterprise has moved to the smart environment of the Canterbury Innovation Centre’.

Professor Philippe De Wilde
Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation