The Innovators Creating Change in Oxford
As the pandemic continues, we know it can sometimes be hard to stay optimistic about the future.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce you to some of the winners of Trinity term’s Social Enterprise Awards. These teams of Oxford University students are innovating for a better city for all. We’ve been inspired by their bold ideas and willingness to address some of the most pressing (and challenging!) issues of our time, from dementia care, to green technology and cyber crime.
We hope that reading about their winning ideas restores a sense of hope- and even excitement- for what lies ahead.
Oxolve
Who are you?
This is either a very big or a very simple question. Professionally, I am many things. A DPhil candidate in International Relations at the University of Oxford. A startup founder in the fintech/ML/DLT space working closely with a number of respected organizations. A geopolitics and political economy tutor. In addition, my past roles included web development, active diplomacy (proper and cultural), consulting, risk analysis for major corporations and many other things. I also travelled widely and worked around the world from Taipei to Lisbon and from Washington DC to Moscow. All those experiences shaped me in some way and helped me unlock valuable life lessons.
In more general terms, my shortest answer used to be that I am a ‘geostrategic idealist’. It felt particularly smart, because those two words put together implied that my feet were still firmly on the ground, but my head was high up in the blue sky. Most recently, however, I started describing myself as a ‘thoughtful doer’. I truly believe that we need many more of those and that we need to work together more effectively. This is because I care not only about the numerous issues which cry for urgent answers, but also how we solve those problems sustainably, efficiently, and ethically. Unless best practices and state-of-the-art ideas are allowed to spread and adapt quickly, we can’t succeed in earnest. For me, fast and constructive iteration plus honest feedback mechanisms seem like the only hopes of humanity to survive the next few decades and begin to contemplate a future among the stars or in the depths of the ocean… yet if we keep thinking in bubbles and siloes like we do now, we are certainly lost. So, I guess those are the things that both keep me up at night and will define who I am becoming as a person.
What is your project?
Oxolve is a digital space for problem-solving. We focus on Oxford, meaning both the town and the gown. At the heart, our agenda is super simple: we provide a powerful tool for constructive conversations and an ecosystem for incentivizing contributions with meritocratic metrics and monetized rewards. This results in a place where one can share, co-evolve, and/or sponsor ideas for a specific community by means of a single app. And while there are many platforms out there that claim to do similar things, none of them have the same potential in terms of eliminating wasteful duplication and uniting the conflicting incentives of collaboration and competition like we do. Once Oxolve succeeds in Oxford, good ideas in the SDG/ESG/impact/public policy spaces will begin to matter much more than they do today. (And they will reach and involve more people, too.)
What are your next steps?
The Oxolve problem-solving community will be hosted on our new digital platform, Idea Atlas. The next round of RCTs will begin by Autumn and the Oxolve community will be leading the charge. Our plan is to add thousands of people before the end of the year. In the process, we will use the grant funding from Oxford Hub to sponsor the most promising talent and incentivize further contributions with inspiring rewards.
How did you become an entrepreneur?
I started my first IT consulting company just as I turned 22. I did it to avoid taking unpaid internships and low value student jobs at my first university. My family and friends thought it was not a good decision. They felt that I misjudged the opportunity cost for my corporate career. Truth be told, I spent too much time on administration and I knew very little about consulting or IT to begin. To add insult to injury, the core business concept was slightly obsolete from day 1 and I wasted a lot of time on sales and delivering our inefficient service. On the flip side, I still made more money than most of my peers. I learnt a lot about myself and even more from the mistakes. This entrepreneurial experience also led me to look at the world with a stronger sense of agency and responsibility. And this is what ultimately led me to engage with charities and various community projects in my latter life.
I came up with the Oxolve project after realizing that the Idea Atlas platform can be improved and adopted to serve actual communities and their problem-solving needs.
SwiftSolar
Who are you?
We are a team of Oxford students and alumni. Sophie is currently reading for a master in computer science, Sari and Jan are finishing up their MSc in Environmental Change and Management and Charlie graduated with an MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology and is working as a stewardship analyst at an asset management firm.
What is your idea?
SwiftSolar is an online platform connecting sustainably-minded investors with Oxfordshire residents who want to install residential solar systems to save money and the environment but cannot afford to pay upfront or get a bank loan. Investors get annual returns and residents get a cost-friendly loan specifically for solar systems.
What are your next steps in terms of development and how will the Award help you get there?
We are currently building a prototype of the platform which we plan to finish during the upcoming summer. Once the prototype is finished, we will start user testing and building up a network of partners with whom we would like to work together in bringing our vision to life. The award will help us with funding critical aspects of the platform development such as web hosting and testing.
Can you share some insight into how you came up with the idea and began your journey?
Jan and Sari came up with the idea while studying energy systems during the Environmental Change & Management programme. We decided to enter the idea into the All-Innovate competition. We got a lot of positive feedback and were introduced to other teams working on exciting ideas which bolstered our motivation to continue working on the project. Having something tangible to work towards was really helpful for us to develop a specific and actionable project plan.
Cyber Safe — Students
What is Cyber Safe — Students?
Cyber Safe — Students is an online cyber security training programme aimed at University students and designed by a student specialising in cyber security and interested in teaching.
Why is there a need for Cyber Safe — Students?
COVID-19 has forced professionals and students to work and study from home, increasing the attractiveness of cyber attacks not only on corporations but also on individuals who have access to sensitive information from their own devices. The University of Oxford being a world-class and research-intensive establishment, it is a clear target for cyber attacks. So it is imperative for students to understand and be able to navigate this dangerous cyber landscape. Just as Universities around the country offer training in avoiding plagiarism when new students arrive at University, Cyber Safe — Students provides a basic Cyber Security training so students understand the threats they are subject to online and how they can protect themselves, their data, and their work at University and beyond.
What are your next steps in terms of development and how will the Award help you get there?
As a very new project, the next step is to pilot Cyber Safe — Students with a group of interested participants who will go through a series of short videos and live workshops to gather feedback and ideas for improvement. The Award will be particularly helpful in setting up the necessary platforms and getting the necessary equipment to do this. Once the content of the training and mode of delivery are set, Cyber Safe — Students will be pitched to Colleges and Universities to be more widely available to students.
If you are interested in participating in the pilot please fill in this online form and our team will be in touch shortly! https://forms.gle/HTAex6fbWHqo1JB5A
How did you come up with the idea for Cyber Safe — Students?
The idea for Cyber Safe — Students was born out of a discussion with other PhDs and postdocs at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. During one of our sessions as part of the RisingWISE programme organised by the MPLS Division, our team had to come up with an enterprise idea and pitch it to the rest of the participants. My team members were very aware of their limited cyber security knowledge, so they were interested in a programme that would summarise the basics, and their sentiment was echoed by the rest of the participants. Discussing this idea with other students, staff, and the Oxford Hub made it evolve and eventually come to life!
HiveCare
Who are you?
My name is Julius, I am a final year PhD student in the field of biomedical engineering at the University of Oxford and together with my co-founders Arkady and Pavandeep I founded HiveCare. Arkady is a PhD student in mathematical modelling and Pavandeep now works as a consultant, but she previously completed a PhD and postdoc in dementia research. We have been working together for over a year on a number of projects and share a deep interest in healthcare and social care projects.
What is your product?
Our product is an app for dementia carers that helps them solve two big problems. Firstly, we have discovered that non-professional carers are often overwhelmed and confused by the information available to them. They struggle to navigate the environment and often end up without finding what is relevant to their caring needs. HiveCare solves that problem by accumulating all care related information from across the web in one convenient place and making it easily accessible to carers in a structured and personalised way.
Secondly, we have found that many carers start to lose touch with friends and family once their care begins, leaving them to feel lonely and isolated. HiveCare addresses this problem by giving carers a social network platform that connects with other carers in similar situations, to share advice, create friendships and build a support network.
What are your next steps in terms of development and how will the Award help you get there?
We have wireframes and designs for our prototype, but require capital to actually build and test it. The Social Enterprise Award will help with that. It allows us to gain access to app building tools, generate the relevant IP and start developing an MVP. With the help of the OxfordHub we are able to get our prototype out into the market and test it with carers, so that hopefully in the future it will be available to all.
Can you share some insight into how you came up with the idea and began your journey?
We met as part of a start-up accelerator program in Oxford and shared our experiences with one another. Through that we discovered that we shared a common interest in health and social care. Pavandeep has previously worked with dementia charities as part of her research and we used that connection to speak to carers. This gave us invaluable insights into their lives and needs and let us come up with the idea for HiveCare.
To find out more about social enterprise at Oxford Hub, visit our website.
