30 November, 2016

CIT Enterprise Society and UCC’s E&S Society collaborated to deliver a student based initiative aimed at providing a platform for student entrepreneurs to collaborate and innovate. This initiative was established through the creation of a competition geared towards students from both CIT and UCC working together to solve the problems of the future. This platform was a competition known as the “Student Revolution” and was run at Johnson Controls at One Albert Quay. Johnson Controls generously provided catering, judges and prize money for the winning team. The competition was held on November 18th 2016 where students worked towards solving problems of food wastage, transportation, data protection and healthcare challenges. Each idea was as innovative as the other, however a winning team had to be chosen. The winning team were a highly impressive bunch of both CIT and UCC students. In the space of four hours they achieved 190 survey responses and struck a collaborative relationship with the Cork City Council. This particular group decided to solve the problems of parking around Cork City. The solution helped reduce carbon emissions simply by providing an interactive app that displayed vacant public parking spaces around the city. It was also developed to assist the council with highlighting which spaces were occupied without payment. If implemented it will save the City Council a wealth of resources while also reducing the effect of carbon emissions on the environment.

My Thoughts

  I had originally thought of this concept in May 2015. Cork is a small place in a small country which means it has a huge potential for enabling start-ups to quickly gain traction. A good way to do this is to create initiatives through collaboration, which will open up possibilities for start-ups to access more funding and resources. Over the past few months I had the pleasure of working with Lorna Buckley of Johnson Controls who assisted me with providing an abundance of resources. Without Lorna, there wouldn’t have been a competition. Roisín Fox of UCC’s E&S Society expressed nothing but enthusiasm and was on board from the very beginning. This event this year was a great success and it is envisioned that next year we will bring more Universities and Institutes of Technology on board. Ensuring that Ireland becomes an international hub for entrepreneurship is something I feel very passionate about. Networking and collaborating is the root of Entrepreneurship, the more it’s practiced and encouraged the more success there will be.