i2i – Ideas to Innovation

Ideas to Innovation (i2i), delivered through the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship, has been designed for ambitious final year PhD and post-doctoral researchers looking to unlock their entrepreneurial and creative potential. This programme encourages research students to consider the social and economic relevance of their research.

Within the i2i programme you will:

• Explore entrepreneurship as an option for corporate innovation and new venture creation.
• Gain a fundamental understanding of business.
• Develop knowledge of how to commercialise your research.
• Develop a network of likeminded researchers facing similar challenges.
• Have the opportunity to apply for a digital Entrepreneurship: Impact of Research badge to recognise your accomplishment.

This course encourages researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and business professionals from multiple disciplines to talk to each other “outside the box”. The programme helps you explore your desire to take your research to market, understanding creative methods, team building, cultures and communications and the fundamentals of business. By the end of the course you will have had fun, learned about yourself and your ideas and how to communicate them effectively.

You will have met a huge network of smart entrepreneurial people, feel that you are amongst people with shared values and hopefully feel encouraged to take your research forward into society.

Within this three-day entrepreneurial programme, we combine large scale plenary sessions with small group activity. Each group has two facilitators to transfer the learning from the plenary – to guide and support you. We feel that this format enables you to consider the social and economic relevance of your research and will equip you with the skills and know-how to turn your ideas into action.

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Agenda

Dates: 29 – 31 January 2025

i2i Programme Summary

Day One enables an understanding of personal values, motivations and direction.

Day Two focuses on the importance of building teams, as well as generating potential impact pathways for your research.

Day Three looks at the basic elements of taking an idea and turning it into a product or service and how to communicate it with passion.

Speakers and Facilitators

Dr Orsolya Ihasz

Dr Orsolya Ihasz is the Programme Director of Ideas to Innovation. She is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship, and a Fellow at the Foundation for Science and Technology. Her research interest focuses on responsible innovation management and social impact measurement especially in public health. As well as leading Ideas to Innovation (i2i), aimed at the researchers and early-career researcher community across disciplines to support entrepreneurial ventures geared towards finding solutions to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), she is also an external advisor to the WHO on the scaling digitally enabled health interventions for tackling globally.

Dr Shailendra Vyakarnam

Shai is a Visiting Professor at the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield University, having been Director for four years. Previously, for fourteen years, he was founding Director of Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the University of Cambridge. He is passionate about entrepreneurship education and development and has been in this field for over 30 years.

Guest Speakers

Meet this year’s Entrepreneurship Panel which will be on Day 2 of the programme.

Dr Aqeel Shamsul

CEO & Co-founder, Frontier Space

Dr Aqeel Shamsul is the CEO and Co-Founder of Frontier Space Technologies Ltd, a UK Space Biotech startup that is industrialising space biotechnology to develop and manufacture new therapeutics and medicine in orbit. Aqeel completed his PhD at Cranfield University in 2022 in developing a miniaturised bio laboratory for space application, which he led and flew its first technology demonstration mission in the stratosphere. Aqeel is a proud i2i alumni, and during his time at Cranfield, he spun out the technology from Cranfield University with a few alumni and commercialised it to perform high-throughput drug discovery and biomanufacturing in orbit. Since its incorporation, Frontier Space, which benefited from Cranfield seed funding, has won over 1 million GBP in non-dilutive funding to advance core fluidic and imaging technologies and participated in UKSA inaugural LEO & GEO accelerator programme, Seraphim Space Accelerator, Mandala Space Ventures and European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre.

Louise Parlons Bentata

Louise has extensive experience in marketing strategy and commercialisation, having started her career as Marketing Manager at L’Oréal and Global Marketing Strategy Manager at Johnson & Johnson. Louise later established a marketing strategy consultancy, Aberdare Consulting supporting management teams in global and SME companies with everything form branding to lead generation. Her client experience focused on specialist engineering and manufacturing industries. This experience working in supply chains, where valuable technologies were relegated to landfill, was the catalyst for undertaking a postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business at Cambridge University. She subsequently undertook a remote climate technology fellowship programme, On Deck Climate Tech, where she met Nestor Rueda-Vallejo, CTO and Co-founder of Bluemethane. Louise also holds an MA in Geography from Cambridge University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Daniel Murray

Daniel is an a multi award-winning scientist and entrepreneur with a focus on technology translation and commercialisation. Daniel is one of the UKs leading experts on industrial uses of microalgae and the use of biology for negative emissions. Daniel founded and led UK sustainable water treatment company Industrial Psychology in 2012, where as CEO and CTO he designed the technology, built the team and developed the companies’ relationships with industry. Industrial Phycology is currently the largest algal company in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. Daniel is current part of the team at leading UK VC studio Deep Science Ventures where he leads on the development of biotic negative emissions technologies. Daniel also consults for a range of high-tech startups where he supports them with technology development and scaling as well as securing funding and assessing technologies.

Who should attend?

i2i is for:

• Researchers within Centres of Doctoral Training and partner institutions.
• Third year/final year doctoral candidates across multiple disciplines.
• Postdocs from multiple disciplines.

If you are unsure if i2i is for you, please contact Orsolya Ihasz at Orsolya.Ihasz@cranfield.ac.uk for more information.

Location & travel details

The Gallery - CMRI Building 38, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL

Download a visitor guide including map, directions and health and safety information.

Accommodation

Please contact Cranfield Management Development Centre directly +44 1234 751122 for accommodation bookings. Please note, all participants will need to cover their own accommodation costs.

Cranfield Enhance: Digital badges

The opportunity to showcase your skills to prospective employers via your social media profile has become increasingly important and on successful completion of i2i and a short assignment, you can earn this digital Entrepreneurship: Impact of Research badge to recognise your accomplishment. The badges are widely recognised by employers as a mark of expertise and dedication.

This badge is part of the Cranfield Enhance Entrepreneurship offering hosted by the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship. Become more resilient, cultivate your problem-solving skills, encourage creative thinking and resourcefulness, and learn valuable soft skills such as communication, negotiation, leadership, and teamwork, which are essential in your personal life and professional career.

Apply to join i2i 2025

Applications for i2i 2025 are now closed.