A real-life ‘Dragon’s Den’ came to Cranfield University recently with the fourth Unilever-Cranfield Innovation Accelerator programme, which culminated in nine student teams pitching their solutions, focused on improving sustainability, to senior executives and academics.
350 Cranfield students were set real-world challenges from Unilever’s ice-cream and savoury foods categories and tea business, ekaterra. In the first three weeks of the challenge the students formed teams from across University disciplines to develop ideas and problem-solve.
From 41 team submissions, nine were shortlisted and went on to spend six intense weeks developing their solutions and proposals with coaching support from Cranfield’s Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship, and the Centre for Competitive and Creative Design, SOM and Energy mentors, alongside individual mentoring from Unilever and ekaterra.
The competition final saw each team given just seven minutes to pitch their ideas to an executive judging panel of experts from Unilever, ekaterra and Cranfield University. The judges were Unilever’s Global & EU Ice Cream Systems & Channels R&D Director, Roy Horne, ekaterra’s R&D Director Digital & Operations, Andreas Mayr and Cranfield’s Professor of Global Economy and Deputy Dean Economics and Banking, Joe Nellis.
“I found it amazingly refreshing to see so many out-of-the-box ideas addressing our business challenges this year,” said Andreas Mayr, R&D Director Digital & Operations at ekaterra. “We are proud of our strong and longstanding partnership between Cranfield University, Unilever and ekaterra in various fields of food, science and research. The Accelerator for us is an opportunity to nurture this relationship and keep on working on and identifying collaboration platforms to unlock new business opportunities. I found it amazingly refreshing to see so many out-of-the-box ideas addressing our business challenges this year.”
To find out the winning team, read the full article Here
