Industry and Education collaborate to deliver business skills bootcamp. BT Business Bootcamp now in its 11th year.
A group of enterprising school students have gathered at NovaUCD to take part in the annual BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp, following their success at the 2020 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) in January. In total, 31 students from 11 counties will take part in the four-day intensive commercialisation and mentoring workshop.
All those taking part in this year’s event were participants in the BTYSTE in January. Notable participants include the winners of the 56th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2020, Cormac Harris and Alan O’Sullivan from Coláiste Choilm in Cork.
Now in its 11th year the BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp was established in 2010 by BT and is delivered in partnership with the team at UCD Research and Innovation. The aim of the Bootcamp is to give students the commercialisation skills they need to develop their BT Young Scientist & Technology project ideas.
The culmination of the four-day programme will see the students pitching their companies to an expert panel of judges including Dr Tony Scott, founder of the Young Scientist Exhibition, Ann O’Dea, editor-at-large, Silicon Republic, Evelyn Smith, senior commercialisation specialist at Enterprise Ireland and Shay Walsh, managing director, BT Ireland.
A number of past participants of BTYSTE Business Bootcamp have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs and household names, including founder and CEO of Evervault, Shane Curran, co-founders of BetterExaminations.ie, Danny Hobbs and James Eggers, and founder of Free Feet Medical Edel Browne, who was named as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2019.
Speaking at the kick off of the 2020 BT Business Bootcamp Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland said, “The BT Young Scientist Business Bootcamp has been an integral part of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition programme for eleven years, and in that time I am proud to say that many of our alumni have gone on to huge success in business. What is even more significant is that some of these successful entrepreneurs will return here this week to share their experiences with our new Bootcamp graduates, to offer guidance on how to take an idea and transform it into a business proposition. I’d like to wish all our 31 students the best of luck this week.”