Venture Day

Following a two-year break, we were delighted to host Cranfield VentureDay 2022 face-to-face once again. Over 150 businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs joined us for a day of panel discussions, keynote speakers, and networking sessions.

The grand theme of the day was 'Building Resilience for a Sustainable and Profitable Future'. A big thank you to our speakers, panellists, sponsors, and supporters for making it such an insightful, inspiring, and fun day. To view images from the day please see here and hope to see you at the next one!

Santander Elevator Pitch Competition

One of the highlights in the event calendar is the Santander Pitch Competition.  Selected businesses get to pitch their business ideas to a senior panel of investors, entrepreneurs and industry experts for a chance to win from a prize fund of £5,000 provided by Santander Universities.  

Drawn from across the university the eventual winners, Kreios Space, managed to fend off strong competition from masters, doctoral and even executive education students to win first prize and a chance to pitch for investment as part of Investor Day. 

REF 2022 - Cranfield's Impact

This year’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) results are an absolute testament to our ethos of delivering real-world IMPACT. The REF is the UK’s system for assessing the quality and impact of research in UK universities and Cranfield School of Management smashed it ranking 7th for research impact in Business and Management, out of 108 business schools.

EU-Startups Summit

Dr Oksana Koryak and several of our MSc in Management and Entrepreneurship (MENT) students attended the EU Start-Up Summit in Barcelona in May. Attendance at this conference is the “crown jewel” of our extra-curricular offering and is exclusively offered to our MENT students. The programme featured insightful keynotes and fireside chats with successful European scaleups and investors. It was a perfect opportunity for our students to get inspired, embed their learning from their taught programme and extra-curricular activities, and expand their networks.

Research

Syed Yaqzan, Doctoral Researcher at the Bettany Centre had a big moment in Texas, USA. Syed presented his research paper co-authored by Dr Stephanie Hussels and Dr Oksana Koryak at the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC). He had an unforgettable time and took some great learnings from it. The conference was hosted by Babson College and Baylor University. Syed was also featured in the Financial Times sharing industry expert advice on Scope 3 emissions.

Bettany team Summer BBQ

In Bettany Centre tradition, the team and friends of the Centre gathered again for the annual Bettany Summer BBQ to reflect on the year, and enjoy good food and company before heading on their well-deserved summer break.

Global Entrepreneurship Week

This is the first time we have run this event and it was a great success! In total, we ran nine events over the week, attracting 339 attendees, with many coming to multiple events. The efforts paid off, with more staff and students at Cranfield now being aware of the importance of entrepreneurship and an entrepreneurial mindset as well as the extensive extra-curricular entrepreneurship offering available at Cranfield. Thank you for everybody’s input and support!

See the event site here for more information.

MENT fireside talks

Throughout the year, the MSc In Management and Entrepreneurship (MENT) students had the privilege to learn from various entrepreneurs and investors who joined their cohorts as part of a ‘fireside talk’ speaker series. A big thank you to:

• Debbie Lewis and Ricke Williams, NatWest Accelerator
• Sam Bird, Seraphim Space Accelerator
• Ellie Gyaurova, Generation Space
• Petar Dimov, Alhemy Crew
• Del Waterman and James Berry, Green Funds Investments Limited
• Agata Maria Bendik, Plug and Play Tech Centre
• Robert Lee and Ajeet Kaur-Sucha, REAS Group/KonnekApp
• Amer Nahouli, Liban Fresh, Workforce Solutions at LH
• Margaret Sherer, Cittadina Marketing

Speaker Series November

Our popular Entrepreneurship Speaker Series continued both face to face and online. Over 300 people attended these events in November. We would like to extend our special thanks to our fabulous speakers who not only gave very inspirational talks but patiently answered many questions thrown at them. We also saw the highest number of selfies taken with the alumni present! If you did not get a chance to attend one of these events, you can find the write-ups for these here:

• John E Milad
• Nick Jenkins
• Panel Discussion: Harry Specters co-founder, PeripherAi founder & EQUUS co-founder (link coming soon)
• Jerry Ejikeme

Cranfield 50 event

We closed the year with our annual Cranfield 50 reception at 12 Hay Hill London. It was a wonderful opportunity to thank alumni, colleagues, and friends of the Bettany for all their support throughout the year and catch up on what everybody has been doing. There was such a buzz in the room! We are very privileged to have such a powerful network of entrepreneurs at Cranfield.

Research

Congratulations to Dr Richard Adams, Dr Sergey Portyanko, Dr Orsolya Ihasz, Professor Asta Pundzienė, Professor Dietmar Grichnik and Professor Christine Volkmann for publishing the edited book on "Artificiality and Sustainability in Entrepreneurship - Exploring the Unforeseen, and Paving the Way to a Sustainable Future" as part of the KEEN project.

Peers matter much for success. In what way do they influence entrepreneurial intention? If you would like to know more read the most recent paper in IMJR by Dr Sergey Portyanko, Dr Stephanie Hussels and colleagues.

We are delighted to congratulate Dr Orsolya Ihasz for being selected as one of the 30 people across the UK (10 academic, 10 industries, 10 civil service) for the Foundation Future Leaders programme, starting in January 2023.  Well done!