MIT R&D conference

Back in June, Be The Spark hosted a lecture from Michael Schrage at the DevOpsGroup offices and my mind was blown. As a Research Fellow at MIT, Michael has worked with industry leaders to get them to rethink how behavioural economics influences innovation. This level of thinking was a huge shift for me, and it made me want more.

Along with Prof. Dylan Jones-Evans, I decided we need to look at how we expose more founders to these kinds of insights. We’ve spent a few months working on how that would look without flying MIT academics over to the UK (and bearing that cost).

I’m really excited to announce that we’ve found a way to make this happen.

We are inviting six founders to join a group that will attend the 2018 MIT R&D conference, along with a day before and after of workshops and sessions led by entrepreneurs, corporates and academics from the Boston/Cambridge eco-system. 

As with anything like this, the main support will come from the other companies on the trip. We aim to take a group of ambitious founders who are working on interesting projects, and are committed to attending the trip with the right spirit and attitude. Applications are open now.

We’ll be staying near Central Square, Cambridge in Airbnbs, to make sure that we can do the trip as cost-effectively as possible. By doing this, with the support of Welsh Government we can do the trip for under £700 – all in. Conference tickets alone are normally $2,250.

Itinerary

Monday Fly out from Heathrow

Tuesday First day of activities and workshops

Wednesday First day of R&D conference

Thursday Second day of R&D conference

Friday Second day of activities and workshops

Saturday Work day/open day for your meetings

Sunday Return flight (note: flight arrives in the UK on the morning of Monday 19th)

The Tuesday and Friday will be designed in the lead up to the trip once we have an idea of the make-up of the group, but the objective is to make the sessions interactive, challenging, and insightful. 

This is not a Town Square event, we are collaborating with Welsh Government and other partners in the spirit of BeTheSpark principles in action to make the trip valuable, and possible. Applications are due to Welsh Government, you can request a form by clicking this link. 

We aim to notify applicants as soon as we can in order to afford you time to plan. We will be working on the basis of the first strong applications received will take places rather than assessing all applications after a deadline. We expect the programme to be over-subscribed, so please accept my apologies if you don’t make it on this occasion. 

In the lead up to the event we will arrange a call to try to find a way to ensure your specific needs are met by the agenda. This won’t be a personalised trip – we will aim for workshops to be generally useful for companies that are aiming to scale up – but we will do everything we can to create sessions that are mutually beneficial based on your feedback. 

The purpose of the trip is to help you to make leaps in making your business a success. If you need to break away to deal with pressing matters, or to meet clients or investors, then that takes priority. We are there as leaders of our businesses. 

If you’re interested, click here to apply. If you have any questions, let us know on the application form.