Find out more about our new SETsquared programme for students to solve innovation challenges for local SMEs and charities

As part of the Setsquared partnership, a technology commercialisation partnership between 5 universities across the South of England, Student Enterprise (SE) will be adding the new “intrapreneurial” pathway to our offering for students. Launching IKEEP (Intrapreneurial Knowledge, Exchange Enterprise Pathway), the new intrapreneurial pathway gives students a chance to test their knowledge and skills whilst solving an innovation challenge for a local business or charity.

The £2million project, half-funded by the Office for Students, aims to bring intrapreneurship into the SE offerings across 4 of the SET squared universities, potentially benefiting 800 students. The programme starting imminently, will aim to offer mixed teams of 2 or 3 students from different disciplines, both undergraduates with postgraduates. The key will be finding the best fit for solving the company or charity’s innovation challenge. Student Enterprise will match students with businesses to solve issues, develop new relationships and support intrapreneurs to bring their ideas into reality.

Kat Mack, Student Enterprise manager shared her thoughts on the exciting opportunity: ‘This is a great opportunity for enterprise focussed students to gain experience and demonstrate their knowledge with an existing business. Taking part in this mini consultancy or knowledge exchange project (KEP), will develop a pathway between businesses and students to create a partnership that helps a business to solve issues whilst helping the students to gain invaluable paid experience.’

The SETSquared partnership will be running workshops to support the students to gain Intrapreneurial skills. The four areas of training will be repeated throughout the academic year to help undergraduates and postgraduates to gain the skills to apply for the places.

Students who are interested in the IKEEP opportunity, which will offer selected students a paid mini consultancy should register their interest via this link.

Businesses who would like to propose an innovation challenge for students to work on are invited to submit their suggested challenges here. Innovation challenges can include anything from brand awareness, to business process development, to product research, design & testing, to data & platform innovations. We are particularly keen to see challenges with a link to one or more of this year’s Student Enterprise themes; The Female Perspective, Sustainability & the Circular Economy, Internationalisation and Collaboration.

Throughout the academic year, Student Enterprise run a range of workshops and 1-2-1 sessions on funding, mentoring support from business professionals, development advice and more – all to support Surrey students and recent graduates. Run as a cohort system, the initiative helps budding entrepreneurs at every stage of their enterprise skills development

•            Exploring their potential through practical enterprise workshops

•            Experiencing the development of their idea through enterprise challenges 

•            Executing their business idea in the dedicated campus incubator.

For news and updates follow @surreystudententerprise on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. For further information on Student Enterprise click here