Explore, Dream, and Discover
Thinking Outside the Box
Do you have bold/big ideas that are sustainable, innovative, inspired by teamwork, and multidisciplinary?
Are you being so protective of your ideas? Be informed that:
Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
Why not make your ideas public? sharing your ideas might:
- open the door to feedback from others who can help nurture and develop it.
- attract people who have complementary skills to join your team and help you transform it into business.
- attract potential investors who can provide the needed startup capital.
Turning an Idea into a Business
Transforming your ideas into business usually requires money, mentorship, or both. The following are platforms where you can share your ideas to get mentorship and funding, ask questions, start conversations, give feedback on other people’s ideas, network and make connections.
- Ideator: created to foster global innovation and entrepreneurship by connecting business brains and ideas with the resources needed to successfully build a business. You develop your idea first, you then create a team by inviting people to collaborate with you, advisors and investors can then find you, follow you, offer you support and when you’re ready, you can entertain offers to sell your business ideas or receive funding and launch. Your ideas may be selected by ideators to receive backing through the Ideator Fund.
- Idea Challenge or Competitions- these are business challenges running across industries such as:
- Santander University
- Big Ideas by Santander Universities: created to help identify ways to overcome some of the key technological issues facing the financial industry (up to £20,000 for grabs). Most importantly, you retain the right of ownership for your ideas and prototypes. To participate, you have to be a student studying at a UK university, or you’ve graduated in the last 5 years, you can take part. The challenge is focused on the following three areas: The Future Of Semantic Search, The Future Of Digital Authentication, and The Future Of Virtual Banking. Previous winners.
- The 60 Second Pitch Awards by Santander University (up to £1,500 and business support and advice!): created for those can ‘wow’ an audience with a sensational new business idea, concept or product in 60 seconds. Make sure your pitch is creative, innovative or funny. Ensure you appeal to the public. Link to previous winners.
- Other Competitions: Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards (previous winners)
- European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Digital Challenge: created to accelerate the market uptake of research-based digital technologies focusing on Europe’s strategic, societal challenges which include Digital Industry, Digital Cities, Digital Wellbeing and Digital Infrastructure (up to €50,000 for the best team in each field). IET select the 15 most innovative European start-ups in these fields and help them succeed globally. Previous winners.
- Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge
- Accelerator London
- Open Data Incubator for Europe
- Centre for Challenge Prizes
- Big Ideas Wales
- Project Firefly
- Santander University
Resources and Links
- Finance options available to start-ups and small businesses
- How to get venture capital funding for your open data business
- Santander Universities SME Internship Programme
- Enterprise Toolkit
- Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail
- How Investors Recognize a Successful Startup Early On
- Asia Pacific Ph.D. Challenge
- IET Innovation & Entrepreneurship
- IET Professional Training Courses
- Innovative Approaches to Doctoral Education
- University of Bradford Digital Health Enterprise Zone (DHEZ)
- Impact Investments
- Google Careers
- Facebook for Business
- Twitter for Business
- LinkedIn for Business and LinkedIn or Small Busines
- Innovate UK
- Tech City UK
- Startups Africa
LinkedIn Blog Feeds
- Sharing LinkedIn’s Responsible AI Principles February 22, 2023 4:50 pmCo-authors - Blake Lawit and Ya Xu LinkedIn was founded with a clear vision to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. In 2023, we are seeing transformative advances in AI that have the potential to help us accelerate our progress toward that vision. AI is not new to LinkedIn. LinkedIn has long used AI to enhance our members’ professional experiences. By leveraging the power of AI, we help our members connect, increase productivity and achieve success in their careers. While AI has enormous potential to expand access to opportunity and ultimately […]Blake Lawit
- Major win for our members in court ruling against personal data scraping November 4, 2022 9:56 pmToday, lead attorney Sarah Wight shared an update on LinkedIn about the hiQ court ruling that LinkedIn may enforce its User Agreement against data scraping and fake accounts. This is a significant step in helping us keep our platform and members safe, so we're sharing it with you in full text here. Today in the hiQ legal proceeding, the Court announced a significant win for LinkedIn and our members against personal data scraping, among other platform abuses. The Court ruled that LinkedIn’s User Agreement unambiguously prohibits scraping and the unauthorized use of scraped data as […]Sarah Wight
- Mythbusting the Feed: How We Work to Address Bias November 1, 2022 5:00 pmWhether we’re building AI models or new features, we’re continuously iterating on our processes to ensure we’re uncovering and addressing any instances of bias in our products and enabling fairness on the platform. This is part of our always-ongoing work to find and address bias. This work is especially important on our LinkedIn Feed and is the focus of the third and final part of our “Mythbusting the Feed'' blog series. If you missed part one or two in the series make sure to go back and check them out to learn what type of conversations are welcomed on LinkedIn, how the Feed […]Imani Dunbar
- New LinkedIn profile features help verify identity, detect and remove fake accounts, boost authenticity October 25, 2022 4:00 pmI have the pleasure of hearing from you and members across LinkedIn how much value you get from our professional community we’re building. Equally important, is that in order for you to find that next job, learn new skills, or connect with others, you want to feel confident that the people you come across are authentic. In June, companies globally reported a rise in fraudulent activity across the internet, and I shared in this post about how we were tackling the issue on LinkedIn. I am eager to share that as part of our ongoing commitment to keeping LinkedIn a trusted professional […]Oscar Rodriguez
- Mythbusting the Feed: How the Algorithm Works August 18, 2022 4:00 pmIn this second part of our “Mythbusting the Feed” blog series we’ll answer the question “What shows up in my Feed, and why?”, show you how to tailor your Feed so that you don’t miss the conversations that matter to you, and address common myths and misconceptions around how the Feed works. If you missed it, make sure to check out our first post, on what types of conversations are welcomed on LinkedIn and what it means to be professional when sharing content on LinkedIn. Sabry Tozin, our VP of Engineering, expands on how the Feed algorithms work in the videos below: What shows up in […]Manisha Sharma
- Understanding when and why to follow people on LinkedIn June 30, 2022 9:30 pmAs the global job market continues to shift, having access to unique perspectives and insights from incredibly skilled professionals is more valuable than ever before. From cybersecurity insiders, to agriculture experts, to thought leaders on diversity and leadership, and beyond, the world’s experts are talking on LinkedIn. If you’re looking to gain even more professional insights, updates, and advice from the knowledgeable people you don’t know on LinkedIn, we have a simple solution – follow them. By choosing to “follow”, you can see and interact with people you want to learn from, […]Naman Goel
- Working together to keep LinkedIn safe June 16, 2022 7:00 pmTeams at LinkedIn - like the one I help lead for trust, privacy, and equity - are tasked with the hard work needed every day to ensure that you can safely and securely connect to opportunity. Over the last few months, we’ve seen a rise in fraudulent activity happening across the Internet, including here on LinkedIn, and heard questions on how we are working to prevent it. First, our policies are clear on prohibiting fake profiles or fraudulent activity, including investment and financial scams. Through paired use of technology like artificial intelligence and teams of experts, we […]Oscar Rodriguez
- Three tips to excel at salary negotiations June 16, 2022 3:00 pmIt’s official: You’ve secured a promising post-graduation job offer! Now comes the tricky part: Salary negotiations. For decades, employees were indirectly—and sometimes expressly—told to refrain from “money talk” in the workplace and amongst peers. All of this created an environment that made salary negotiations a sticky situation. But that’s changing. There’s now a greater acceptance of discussing salary with colleagues and friends in your field. “I used to be afraid of talking about money with my co-workers because it felt like a taboo topic, writes Christen Nino De Guzman, […]Suzi Owens
- Wherever you are in your career, there is always a space for you on LinkedIn June 10, 2022 2:53 pm“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.” These are the opening lines of the poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. For many of us, the last two years of uncertainty have been a period of great reflection and the catalyst to truly identify what it is we really want from our lives. Whether you call it The Great Resignation or The Great Reshuffle, things have evolved fairly dramatically in the […]Darain Faraz
- Transparency Report: Second Half of 2021 June 2, 2022 11:00 amToday we published our Transparency Report for the second half of 2021. The report covers government requests we received and action we took to remove content that violates our Professional Community Policies. Once again, we saw record engagement on LinkedIn during this reporting period. While the majority of that content was constructive, we saw an increase in the amount of misinformation, fake accounts, and other abusive content and behavior removed from LinkedIn. Here are a few highlights from the report: The amount of misinformation removed rose during this period. We attribute […]Patrick Corrigan