Category / Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

BUCfE Connects with Gaming Students at FODI

Members of the CfE team were delighted to connect with Gaming and Music final year students at the FODI event to explain upcoming proposed entrepreneurial programmes.

Speaking during Glyn Hadley’s and Christos Gatzidis’ lectures, the Student Entrepreneurship Manager had the opportunity to give a high level overview of the Bournemouth University Graduate Incubator’s offerings including:

  • Hackathon
  • Bootcamp
  • Competition
  • 12 months incubation space

The Business Ideas Hackathon was the main focus of the talk.  The Hackathon will be a 36-hour business idea hack to identify and develop out innovative potential high growth businesses.  Running in the Autumn semester 2014, the Hackathon will enable students to devise and code a new business from the ground up and provide an environment to test out the proposed business model.  Students from SciTech will team up with students from HSC, Media, Tourism and Business, for instance, to code a solution to a real-world problem or to scope out a potential fast-growing business.   The focus is on innovation, creativity and on high growth with fusion of different disciplines being key to success.  Whilst this initial presentation was to SciTech, students from any disciplines are invited to apply and presentations will be given to all schools in September.   Bournemouth University students about to enter their final year are invited to register their interest at this stage at our Hackathon page.

Designed to hone and refine business ideas, the Bootcamp will be for participants of the business idea hackathon or those who already know what business they want to do.  The Bootcamp will enable participants to build out their business plans and to start to develop their offering and their pitch.

The Bootcamp feeds into the Business Idea Competition:  a Dragon’s Den-style event where businesses pitch to win 12 month’s free incubator space and business support at the Centre for Entrepreneurship.

SciTech students had left their industry placements for the day to attend the FODI event, with some of the students showcasing their work to the general public.  During the event, BUCfE incubator business Static Games were able to feature their new game, Mendel’s Farm, and sign up beta testers for their imminent release.

The CfE team are immensely grateful to Glyn Hadley and Christos Gatzidis for allowing us some time to present to their students.

Dorset Business Awards 2014 Launch

The Centre for Entrepreneurship is delighted to be attending the launch of the Dorset Business Awards 2014. Sponsoring the Entrepreneur of the Year Award again this year, Bournemouth University is is keen to showcase and recognise local entrepreneurs who have made an economic or social impact in the region.

The DBA launch is being held at Parley Manor and Mark Painter, Dr Lois Farquharson, Melissa Carr, Dr Chris Chapleo and Nikki Gloyns are amongst the attendees representing the University.

The Dorset Business Awards are run by Dorset Chamber of Commerce and Industy (DCCI) and award categories have included an Apprenticeship Training Award, Bournemouth University’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Dorset Tourism Award and the Barclays Business Woman of the Year Award.  This year awards include:

  • Entrepreneur of the Year
  • Business Growth Award
  • Excellence in Innovation Award
  • Dorset Export Award

The awards celebrate local achievement and success in the various categories and are an excellent way for local businesses who enter to gain publicity and recognition in addition to being able to showcase their products or services to a wider audience.    Winners are also able to display the DBA KiteMark on their letterheads and literature.

The Dorset Business Awards 2014 Competition opens on Monday 23rd June and runs until 12th September.  Winners are announced in November at the Dorset Business Awards Gala Dinner.   Further information is available from the Dorset Business Awards website.

Dorset Business Awards 2014

Ferndown & Uddens Business Improvement District collaborates with a multi-disciplinary team from BU

The Business Improvement District (BID) yesterday hosted their first breakfast meeting on business continuity and information assurance.

Staff from the Business School, The Disaster Management Centre and the Cyber Security Unit presented a knowledgeable insight to identify collective responsibilities of businesses within the district, giving examples where one business problem may affect other enterprises across the estate. The Dorset Fire & Rescue Service and Dorset Police further supported BU’s representations concerning crisis management; business resilience; disaster recovery and cybercrime. In addition, A&T Insurance Group provided a comprehensive study on insuring business resilience.

BUCSU introduced the availability of TSB Innovation Vouchers to meet the recently published ‘Cyber Essentials’ issued by the Information Commissioners Office.

Fusion – Establishment of research collaboration, student and staff exchanges with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

 My application to the Fusion Investment Fund (FIF) has been successful.  The funds will be used to establish research collaboration, student and staff exchanges with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa. I will be travelling to the UKZN during Easter this month for an exploratory visit. While at UKZN, I will present a paper to the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance. This will be followed by a series of meetings with students and staff. On my return, I will apply to Bournemouth University to put in place the three relationships.

 A successful establishment of the three aforesaid relationships will have many enormous benefits to the students and staff of BU and UKZN. For example, students should benefit culturally in terms of spending sometime in South Africa and UK respectively due to differences in the two countries’ cultures. In addition to cultural awareness, the staff exchange will benefit the staff involved through observing how lecturers in a different country deliver lectures. Apart from co-authoring academic journal articles, research collaboration between BU and UKZN staff should be beneficial where the research call (e.g. Horizon 2020) requires that researchers from Europe collaborate with a partner from South Africa.

 At an institution level, the relationships should help BU in two main ways. Firstly, student exchange should increase awareness of BU in Africa which may translate into increase in percentage of African students enrolled at BU. Increasing the percentage of students from Africa is important for BU because currently less than 4% of our students are from Africa compared to 8% UK universities average. Secondly, the increase in student population from Africa will also help BU achieve the strategic plan objective of increasing overseas students’ recruitment by 15% by 2015.

 UKNZ is the third largest university in South Africa and a very good university and also shares great similarities in university teaching, research and enterprise activities with those of the Business School, School of Tourism, Design, Engineering and Computing, School of Health and Social Care. Further information about the university can be found on: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/.

 Dr Ven Tauringana, Associate Professor of Accounting – The Business School

CfE Upcoming Event: Moov2 with the CIM

Training

Date: Tuesday 8 April 2014

Time: Arrival from 6pm for a 6:30pm start until approx 8pm

Location: EBC

We would like to invite you to join us at our latest CIM event.  Dan Thomas, of Moov2 will be demonstrating, in his straight-talking (and completely non-geeky) style, how businesses and the agencies they work with can successfully make and exploit their data, adding real value to the bottom line.

To book please visit: http://bit.ly/1eK1d3a

Fusion Investment Fund – BU research and education visit in Mexico

Fusion

Dr Christos Apostolakis from the Business School has been awarded Fusion Investment Fund to establish working relationships with Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Tecnologico de Monterrey), Mexico in terms of research and education. Christos has accepted an invitation by the Global Research Chair in Entrepreneurship Eugenio Garza-Laguera at Tec de Monterrey and he will travel to Monterrey on the 5th April 2014 for a week’s visit to engaging in a series of intellectual and networking activities.

During his 5 working-day visit, Christos plans to:

  • Give a guest lecture about Bournemouth University Business School (vision; goals; history; future plans; suggestions for collaboration with Tec de Monterrey and EGADE Business School);
  • Give a presentation about his research work on social entrepreneurship expanding on the significant role of entrepreneurship in biotechnology the main research theme of the host research centre;
  • Attend student classes on Entrepreneurship and, Strategy;
  • Collect material and other secondary data about entrepreneurship activities run or supported by the host research centre;
  • Visit wherever possible local businesses that promote entrepreneurship in biotechnology (in collaboration with the Global Research Chair in Entrepreneurship Eugenio Garza-Laguera);
  • Do networking with colleagues who work for EGADE Business School and the Global Research Chair in Entrepreneurship Eugenio Garza-Laguera;
  • Collaborate in expanding the paper the abstract of which has already been accepted for the ECIE 2014 conference with Dr Marcia Villasana Campos.

It is envisaged that this visit can initiate long term collaboration between the two universities such as staff and student exchange, joint PhD supervision and, student recruitment with a focus on entrepreneurship (and not only). The project contributes to both research and education of the Fusion concept as it aims to develop gradually a strategic partner for BU’s internationalisation process.

Tecnológico de Monterrey is one of the largest private multi-campus universities in Latin America, with over 90,000 students. Based in Monterrey, Mexico the University has 31 campuses in 25 cities throughout the country. It has one of the top graduate business schools in the region and it is well-known for having a large number of students studying abroad every year.

For more information, please contact Dr Christos Apostolakis (capostolakis@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Website & BRIAN Training Sessions

Guidance, Research themes, Training

Screen shot of new website

Due to popular demand we are hosting  training sessions for the new research webpages together with BRIAN training.

These sessions are open to all BU academic staff, post graduate research students and those supporting researchers in their communications activity.

During the session you will learn the following:

Research Webpages

  • Why BU has new research webpages
  • How you can upload content to the website
  • How the site can be used most effectively to maximise exposure of BU research.

BRIAN

  • What is BRIAN and why is it important
  • How to set up and maintain your BRIAN profile
  • How to ensure your details are correct
  • How to request a photo is uploaded
  • How BRIAN links to your external staff profile

To book on one of the following sessions please use the links below…

Thursday 27th March 2pm in P421 Poole House, Talbot Campus

Thursday 17th April 2pm in P421 Poole House, Talbot Campus

We hope to follow these with a session at the Lansdowne Campus (room pending). If you would be interested in a Lansdowne session or you have any queries, please  email Shelly Maskell on smaskell@bournemouth.ac.uk

2014 sees a surge in engagement with eBU

PG research, Publishing

Through immediate internal publication and open peer review, eBU is ideally placed to support the developmental needs of authors at any career stage, and I’m pleased to say that, so far, the 2014 issue has seen a levels of engagement from across the career spectrum. eBU has had two working paper submissions so far in 2014 (and there are plenty more in the archived 2013 issue!).

Firstly, under the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing theme, Sheetal Sharma (HSC) and colleagues submitted a paper titled Eliciting Nepali women’s views on childbirth and the newborn. A full text file of this paper has been openly reviewed and can be viewed here – http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/17.  I understand Sheetal has just submitted this paper to an external journal, so best of luck and we await with great excitement to hear the outcome!

Secondly, under the Education, Learning and Practice theme, Jonathan Williams (again HSC) has submitted a paper titled Is student knowledge of anatomy affected by a Problem-Based Learning approach? A full text file of this paper can be read here – http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/24.

eBU was also delighted to be able to support outputs from the 2014 PGR conference, and a number of PGRs have decided to use eBU to showcase their work. Why not take a look at the following abstracts and posters:

Business, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth

Alice Bonasio – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Customer Engagement Through Crowd-Funding and Social Media: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/21

Lifelong Health and Wellbeing

Ben Hicks – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Using commercial computer game technology to benefit men with dementia residing in rural areas of Dorset: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/19

Sheetal Sharma – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Pregnant and ‘dirty’ for 40 days: A qualitative study of childbirth practice, beliefs and myths in Nepal: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/20

Jonny Branney – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Is spinal manipulation associated with changes in cervical inter-vertebral motion?: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/23

Research Methods and Practice

Jenny Roddis – PGR Conf 2014 Poster: Experience of interviewing: face-to-face vs. telephone: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/22

Technology & Design

Manuel Salvador – PGR Conf 2014 Poster: Automating Data Pre-processing for Online and Dynamic Processes in the Chemical Industry: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/18

Bournemouth European Network in Cyber Security (BENICS)

Fusion

In recent years, the field of Cybersecurity has attracted researchers and practitioners from academic fields ranging from Computer Science and Design, through to Psychology and Business Studies. To date, however, these communities have not been influenced by each other. Their research are disseminated in a variety of workshops and conferences across these fields. As a result, there is a misunderstanding of the role these different fields play in improving cybersecurity. For example, some researchers describe people are “the weakest link” and encourage designers to build systems that “Homer Simpson” can use safely. Unfortunately, treating users as a problem limits opportunities for innovation when people are engaged as part of a solution. Similarly, treating practitioners like cartoon characters disenfranchises the very people that a design is meant to support. Bournemouth University is one of the few institutions in the world with interests across the disciplines contributing to Cybersecurity, a small enough size for academics across these disciplines to engage with each other, and the vision necessary to fuel this engagement. To take advantage of the opportunities afforded to Bournemouth, an interdisciplinary seminar series in cybersecurity was launched in September 2013. The seminar series has attracted both staff and students from across the university, together with practitioners from local industry with interests in cybersecurity. So far, this has led to connections forming across the Faculty of Science & Technology, and the Media and Business schools. Resulting collaborations with our seminar speakers have also led to prospective KTP and Horizon 2020 proposals, and invitations to deliver guest lectures at other universities.

To build on this momentum in interdisciplinary cybersecurity activity at Bournemouth, we have created the Bournemouth European Network for Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS): a FUSION funded SMN activity. Over the coming year, BENICS will bring five invited European cybersecurity academics to Bournemouth to engage in short (one-week), focused collaborative visits. These visits will introduce invited academics to Bournemouth’s cybersecurity capabilities, allow them to share their interests with us as part of the cybersecurity seminar series, and engage in short and focused proposal building, research, or teaching resource creation activities.

Following each visit, Bournemouth and the visiting academic will engage in pump-priming activities; these will refine deliverables produced to sustain the momentum created during the visit. These deliverables will form the basis of a joint publication at an agreed international conference or journal.

Watch this space for more information about these visits, and please get in touch if you’re interested in engaging with BENICS and our cybersecurity research in general.

eBU news, updates and success story!

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

eBU news: updates and achievements

It’s been a while since I posted about eBU. Since my last post there has been some exciting updates and progress to report. There are some new faces to welcome, a reminder to encourage students to submit, news that eBU is supporting outputs from the PGR conference and will support outputs from an exciting new conference, and…  (drum roll…) a paper originally submitted to eBU has been published in an external journal!

Welcome aboard!

Heather Savigny has joined me as a co-editor. I have met with Heather a few times now, and it is obvious that she is passionate about developing writing and scholarly skills. On this basis, Heather is a perfect addition to the team. We have both met with the new PVC Prof John Fletcher, and I’m glad to say that, like his predecessor, he is very supportive of eBU. Shelly Maskell from R&KEO has also come aboard and will provide vital support in helping develop eBU.

Encourage students to submit

One immediate challenge for eBU is not appeal to students. eBU launched a bit too late last year to appeal to students who would have made important submissions at the end of last academic year (dissertations etc), but hopefully we will be well placed to appeal to them this year! So I urge all academic staff to encourage students who produce good quality to a) encourage them to spend a little bit more time and format their work into a publishable output and b) offer some support to this end.

PGR conference

eBU is well placed to help early career researchers and students make that leap into the ‘publish or perish’ world of academia. On this basis, it is a tool that PGRs should take advantage of. We are actively encouraging people who presented their work at the PGR conference to submit their work to eBU. We have received a good number of abstracts and posters already, and eBU will be a great platform to showcase this work BU wide. Outputs associated with the PGR conference to have deadlines, and these are:

  • Please submit posters before Friday 14th March.
  • Please submit abstracts before Friday 14th March.
  • Please submit conference papers before 12th April

I would encourage those who made an oral presentations to write it up as a conference paper. There is guidance for PGRs on myBU and on the Graduate School website, but do feel free to get in touch with any questions. We don’t generally set deadlines, so please remember that you can submit any other papers you might have in the pipeline (e.g. review papers) at any time, and we will guarantee a quick internal and open peer review.

Future scope

Congratulations to Luciana Esteves from ApSci, who has been successful in winning some Fusion funding to kick-start an annual undergraduate research conference at BU – SURE@BU. This is something to look out for in the future, but it is worth stating now that eBU will play a key role in the publication of conference abstracts, posters, conference papers etc.

Success!!!

I’m glad to report that one of the submissions to eBU has been published by an external journal, and I believe others will shortly follow suit. The successful paper in question is a paper that I wrote with colleagues. However, it is a useful little case study to illustrate how and why eBU works.

Myself and colleagues in HSC and outside (University of Exeter, University of Plymouth and Westbourne Medical Centre) submitted a grant application in the second half of last year. In most grant applications you have opportunity to summarise the key literature, and this one was no different. Unfortunately whilst the grant application was unsuccessful, I took a senior colleagues advice and spent a little bit of time turning the application into a paper. After a few weeks I submitted it to eBU (the phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is’ comes to mind!). As I had a bit of a vested interest it was processed by editorial colleagues and reviews were uploaded after a few weeks. It really helped having two sets of informed but fresh eyes scrutinise the paper, and changes were made on the basis of these reviews. The paper was submitted to a journal and accepted with suggestions for minor changes.

When I wrote this article I was a Research Assistant here and, like many early career researchers, I had aspirations of becoming published in peer reviewed journals. One of my trepidations was getting that first publication. I’m now a PhD student here, and I’m sure the floodgates will open (along with another colleague have since have had another accepted!) as I now have many ideas for potential papers and now – thanks to eBU – I have no fear of the unknown!

Andy Harding

Doctoral Researcher and eBU co-editor

 

Upcoming event for staff and students: Simon Phelps ‘Starting & Growing a Business’

The Centre for Entrepreneurship is delighted to host a presentation by Simon Phelps a BU graduate and founder of Fluvial Innovation Ltd. Simon founded Fluvial Innovations Ltd alongside Bournemouth University in 2006. Fluvial Innovations Ltd designed, developed and patented the modular flood barrier – Floodstop.

Floodstop was specifically designed to fill a gap within the market for a functional and rapidly deployable flood barrier and is used throughout the UK, US and parts of Europe. Awards for Floodstop include Winner of Climate Week – Best Climate Ready Initiative 2013 and Emergency Planning Society’s Most Innovative Product of the Year 2009. To find out more about Floodstop or Fluvial please visit the website: www.fluvial-innovations.co.uk

Join us to hear more about Simon’s journey from being a Bournemouth University Student to running Fluvial Innovations as a growing and sustainable business. You will get a chance to hear about the steps Simon took along the way and find out about his up and downs on the road to success.

This event is for Bournemouth University Staff and Students only.

To book please visit: bit.ly/1lwiaFV 

Cyber Security Seminar: Everyday Security for Everyday Lives (Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Royal Holloway)

Our next Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Seminar will take place on Tuesday, 4th March at 5pm.
The seminar will take place in EB202 in the Executive Business Centre, and will be free and open to all. If you would like to attend, please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/interdisciplinary-seminar-in-cyber-security-tickets-10691914805

Our speaker will be Dr Lizzie Coles-Kemp. Lizzie is a qualitative researcher, interested in the everyday practices of information production, circulation, curation and consumption within a broad range of communities. She works in Possible Futures Lab within the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway University of London. Her main focus is the interaction between people and security and privacy technologies, how each influences the other and the communities of practice that emerge. As part of this focus, she explores topics such as identity and technology use, gender and information management and information control as a means of power. Current interdisciplinary work includes: value sensitive design in public service delivery, cultural analysis in institutional security and the use of visual research methods in interdisciplinary research.

Abstract: Over the last five years at the Information Security Group, Royal Holloway, a research group called Possible Futures Lab has been working on projects that explore what notions of information control mean in the context of everyday lives. We have two primary objectives: to improve designs related to everyday information production and control and to influence thinking on topics of everyday information security. Each of our projects has started with ethnographic research that has enabled us to identify and observe the relevant spaces and places. From there we have co-designed with each community discovery tools for seeing, experiencing and exploring these spaces. These tools help us to better understand the community viewpoints on information and its control and to design/re-design services and technologies to better support this position. This talk gives examples of this approach in two of our projects that focus on cyber security decision making.

Website training sessions

Training

Screen shot of new website

I just wanted to remind colleagues that we are hosting training sessions for the new research webpages on Friday 7 February and Friday 14 February.

These 90 minute sessions are open to all BU academic staff, post graduate research students and those supporting researchers in their communications activity.

During the session you will learn the following:

  • Why BU has new research webpages
  • How you can upload content to the website
  • How the site can be used most effectively to maximise exposure of BU research.

Sessions are informal and if they fall over lunchtime, do feel free to bring a sandwich!

To book on one of the following sessions please use the links below…

Friday 7 February 2014 12:00-13:30 – S103 Studland House, Lansdowne Campus

Friday 14 February 2014 10:00-11:30 – P131 Poole House, Talbot Campus

Friday 14 February 2014 14:30-16:00 – P131 Poole House, Talbot Campus

If you have any questions about the website or training sessions, please email the research website team.