9 March 2016
By Bryan Smyth
beyan@TheCork.ie
Over three hundred aspiring entrepreneurs from nine Universities in Vietnam, have entered a competition with the top prize of enterprise learning and mentoring at Ireland’s most successful incubation centre, The Rubicon Centre at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). The winners will benefit from a one-month experience on CIT’s Student Inc student entrepreneurship support programme next August. www.cit.ie/studentinc
This project, a partnership between CIT and the University of Economics at the University of DaNang, is funded through the Department of Foreign Affairs Vietnam Ireland Bilateral Exchange (VIBE) programme. The project will support CIT and Rubicon Centre staff to travel to Vietnam to provide enterprise training to staff, and to deliver workshops to over 50 shortlisted students.
The project launched in Vietnam and two Vietnamese lecturers arrived on the CIT Campus on Monday last (March 6th) to participate in CIT Innovation Week – allowing them to witness at first hand the innovation ecosystem that has produced talented graduates such as Myles Murray, who went on to found PMD Solutions (http://www.pmd-solutions.com/), and companies such as TreeMetrics (http://www.treemetrics.com/), Technically Write IT (http://www.technicallywriteit.com/), and Radisens Diagnostics (http://www.radisens.com/).
The Student Inc programme delivered by CIT, in partnership with The Rubicon Centre, has had its most recent success in the form of 2016 Accenture “Leaders of Tomorrow” winner, Vincent Forde. Vincent’s project focused on improving patient safety in the clinical environment, coming out on top of an entry of over 140 projects. Vincent, is in his third year of a degree in Mechanical Engineering at CIT, completed the Student Inc programme last summer a second year student.
Vice President for External Affairs at CIT, Orla Flynn, said, “We’re really looking forward to our engagement with our Vietnamese partners, and testing how the success of our entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in CIT and the Rubicon can translate internationally. We’re also very interested in exploring the diverse nature of the projects which will emerge as finalists from Vietnam. We’re very grateful to the Department of Foreign Affairs for their funding support through the VIBE programme, which will enable staff and student exchange, a vital component of any successful project.”
A number of units within CIT will contribute to the delivery of the project, along with the Rubicon Centre team. Staff from the School of Business, the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence and the Industry Liaison Office, will all provide input to the project, ranging from research support, to practical and theoretical underpinning, through to enabling access to external supports.
