Competitions

Kingston University

Engineers in Business Fellowship has supported Kingston University’s Bright Ideas entrepreneurial competition for four years. Bright Ideas is Kingston University’s annual entrepreneurial competition, open to all students across the university. This year, 133 engineering students entered the competition from both Postgraduate and Undergraduate cohorts. The competition attracted entrants from all three undergraduate programme areas: Aerospace, Mechanical, and Civil, with the highest number of ...

University of Sussex

The Global Design Challenge (GDC) module is compulsory for all first-year students studying Engineering, Informatics, and Product Design at the School of Engineering and Informatics, and students from the International Study Centres. In terms of motivating students at Sussex, the contribution of Engineers in Business was crucial. Three hundred and fifty-one students working in interdisciplinary teams of five members tackled real-world sustainable development problems. This year’s design chall...

Queen's University Belfast

Queen’s University Belfast’s Dragons’ Den, competition is one of many initiatives organised by Enterprise SU, the entrepreneurial arm of Queen’s Students’ Union which helps students develop enterprise skills and start their own businesses. Dragons' Den competitors learn a wealth of business skills including pitching, marketing, finance and legal issues.

University of Greenwich

The University of Greenwich runs the Enterprise Challenge, an annual competition that provides mentoring, training and funding for entrepreneurial students who want to pursue an idea. All students and recent graduates are eligible to apply. There are two streams that you can apply for – a Social Stream, if the business will have a positive environmental or social impact and a Commercial Stream, for any general business idea.

Imperial College Business School

Imperial College Business School provides two undergraduate entrepreneurship courses for undergraduate engineers and scientists. The courses are Entrepreneurship Online and Entrepreneurship (face-to-face). Students taking part in these modules were asked to participate in a pitch competition and were also selected through excellence in achievement based on their validation report coursework assignment, where students embarked on experiments to test hypotheses underlying their business idea. The...

Aberystwyth University

InvEnterPrize is Aberystwyth University’s Student Ideas Competition which is open to undergraduates, post-graduates and recent graduates. The competition rewards the entrant with the ‘Best Business Idea’ InvEnterPrize competition provides a yearly opportunity for entrepreneurial students to develop a business concept or social enterprise idea and pitch it to a panel of successful Aberystwyth University alumni in a virtual ‘Dragon’s Den’ style event. InvEnterPrize is run in conjunction wit...

University of York

The University of York's Business Innovation & Entrepreneurship course provides broad coverage of what’s involved in the exploitation of technologies through innovation and entrepreneurship. It is a practical introduction to the creation and development of enterprises that generate and sustain value from ideas, inventions and opportunities. The broad aims of the course are to (a) develop an awareness of, and interests in, business innovation and entrepreneurship, (b) introduce participants to th...

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick’s Starting a Business module examines how businesses are established. The module gives second-year Engineering Undergraduates the opportunity to understand and appreciate the challenges involved in setting up their own business. The module takes a hands-on approach in teaching students how to think and act like an entrepreneur, covering areas such as developing and testing a business idea, pitching the concept to industry experts and writing a business report based on ...

University of Dundee

Venture is an annual business idea competition for University of Dundee students, staff and recent graduates, with eight categories. With the award of an Engineers in Business prize fund, Venture included a dedicated prize for the most innovative idea from Science and Engineering students.

CREATE, the University of Highlands and Islands’ (UHI) Centre for Enterprise and Innovation

The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) Business Competition is a well-established and high-profile competition open to all students across 13 UHI sites. The competition reaches out through a broad regional marketing campaign to approximately 40,000 FE, HE and Postgraduate students and researchers based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, with a strong focus on supporting students both at the application, shortlisting and post-competition stage. Although open to the wider communi...

London South Bank University

LSBU supports student applications to The Mayor's Entrepreneurs Competition (TMEC). TMEC is a prestigious competition to demonstrate a combination of engineering and entrepreneurial excellence. Despite numerous applications, the Engineering School had not yet had an applicant get into later stages of the competition. To rectify this an embedded programme introducing enterprise to engineers has been developed, supported by the Engineers in Business Prize Fund. The goal is to support as many quali...

University of Exeter

Elevate 2021 was the University of Exeter’s third year participating in the Engineers in Business Competition and was lead by the Student Startups Team. The Elevate competition is a unique opportunity at the university for student engineers to access targeted early-stage venture creation support, exploring innovation beyond their curricular project-based learning. Students were supported by a dedicated member of the Student Startups team working specifically to engage students from Engineering d...

Imperial College London

WE Innovate is Imperial’s flagship female entrepreneurship education programme designed to support the next generation of women entrepreneurs to accelerate their startups. The six-month programme supports female students, developing an early-stage business idea, to advance their leadership and entrepreneurial skills. One of our key goals of this competition is to increase the number of female engineers setting up their own ventures and the WE Innovate team works closely with the Faculty of Engin...

University of Surrey

The University of Surrey’s Foundation Year 'Business Case for Engineers' is an assessed component of the ENG0014 Engineering and Physical Sciences Laboratory and Project module. This project provides students with an insight into the entrepreneurial aspects and the multi-disciplinary nature of engineering and science and enhances skills in a variety of areas including presentation, teamwork, managing deadlines, and idea generation. Students work in groups to make a business case for an engineer...

University of Surrey

The University of Surrey's Enterprise Project embraces the Surrey Electrical and Electronic Engineers in Business Competition. The Enterprise Project is a year-long group project carried out by second-year students from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Surrey. Students work in groups to create innovative concepts relating to the Information Communications Technology, Electronics and Computing sector that have the potential for commercialisation. The pr...

University of Sheffield

Engineering You’re Hired is an intensive one-week activity that is compulsory for all 2nd years within the Faculty of Engineering. Students choose their problem and are then placed in multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural teams to work on a conceptual design and a plan for a project to take the design to the “proof of concept stage”. The competition gives engineers the skills, and evidence of those skills, that will make them highly employable engineers. It gives students experience of working a...

University of Southampton

At the University of Southampton, the Student Enterprise Team (based in the Careers and Employability Service), Future Worlds (the on-campus start-up accelerator, based within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences) and the University’s Social Impact Lab have come together to offer the SEED Start-Up Funding Competition. The competition is exclusive to University of Southampton students and supports them in the creation and development of early stage businesses or social enterprises ...

University of Durham

This year Durham University launched its Bright Ideas Challenge with the support of an Engineers in Business Prize Fund. The Bright Ideas Challenge is an Elevator Pitch competition open to the university's current Engineering, Computer Science or Bioscience students, or multi-disciplinary teams comprising students from these degree categories. Students were inspired to develop innovative solutions for real-world problems and were provided with online support and advice throughout the competiti...

University of Nottingham

Ingenuity supports the creation of start-ups that find innovative and sustainable solutions to tackle the UK’s biggest challenges. Ingenuity works in partnership with industry, education, and communities with lived experience. The Ingenuity Programme works with under-represented groups, as well as students, academics, and those interested in creating social and environmental impact. Ingenuity and its partners are committed to exploring the big issues society faces, focusing on creating pros...

Nottingham Trent University

Ingenuity supports the creation of start-ups that find innovative and sustainable solutions to tackle the UK’s biggest challenges. Ingenuity works in partnership with industry, education, and communities with lived experience. The Ingenuity Programme works with under-represented groups, as well as students, academics, and those interested in creating social and environmental impact. Ingenuity and its partners are committed to exploring the big issues society faces, focusing on creating prospe...

University of Portsmouth

Ingenuity supports the creation of start-ups that find innovative and sustainable solutions to tackle the UK’s biggest challenges. Ingenuity works in partnership with industry, education, and communities with lived experience. The Ingenuity Programme works with under-represented groups, as well as students, academics, and those interested in creating social and environmental impact. Ingenuity and its partners are committed to exploring the big issues society faces, focusing on creating prospe...

Loughborough University

Ingenuity supports the creation of start-ups that find innovative and sustainable solutions to tackle the UK’s biggest challenges. Ingenuity works in partnership with industry, education, and communities with lived experience. The Ingenuity Programme works with under-represented groups, as well as students, academics, and those interested in creating social and environmental impact. Ingenuity and its partners are committed to exploring the big issues society faces, focusing on creating prospe...

University of Bristol

The University of Bristol’s New Enterprise Competition (NEC) is a business start-up competition that allows students, staff and alumni to pitch for a share of over £40,000, legal support and business acceleration services, to develop a commercial or social enterprise.

University of Birmingham

For the first time, the University of Birmingham collaborated with Engineers in Business Fellowship to introduce a new business ideas competition – its 2021 Engineers in Business Competition. One of the key teaching aims of the competition was to inspire more engineers to explore the commercialisation of their ideas. The competition was a great success and the three winning innovations are presented below.

Competitions

View Our Newsletters

Kingston University

University of Sussex

Queen's University Belfast

University of Greenwich

Imperial College Business School

Aberystwyth University

University of York

University of Warwick

University of Dundee

CREATE, the University of Highlands and Islands’ (UHI) Centre for Enterprise and Innovation

London South Bank University

University of Exeter

Imperial College London

University of Surrey

University of Surrey

University of Sheffield

University of Southampton

University of Durham

University of Nottingham

Nottingham Trent University

University of Portsmouth

Loughborough University

University of Bristol

University of Birmingham

Engineering Graduate from Aberystwyth University Makes it to the Final of the Engineers in Business Innovation Competition

Engineering Student from the University of Birmingham Makes it to the Final of the Engineers in Business Innovation Competition

Engineering Students Who Participated in the University of the Highlands & Islands Business Ideas Competition Make it to the Final of the Engineers in Business Innovation Competition