‘Campus Bus Tours’ for SME’s
The Campus Bus Tour is an innovative joint initiative between the Invent-DCU, UCD Innovation academy, Knowledge Transfer Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Smallbusinesscan and Trinity College.
The objective is it to make as easy as possible for small businesses to start engaging with universities, but also to illustrate what a wonderful source of innovation and opportunity universities are. In order to achieve this the ‘Campus Bus Tour’ was developed.
The first ever Campus Bus Tour left last Tuesday 9th June, with 40 small businesses from a wide variety of sectors which included Northside Enterprise Centre, visiting DCU, UCD and Trinity College.
On the day the companies explored the opportunities that universities have to offer in areas such as funding, research, knowledge transfer and innovation, and covered areas of interest the companies have requested such as sensors, e-learning, RFID, cloud computing, data analytics, 3D printing, monitoring systems, food, health, etc.
The companies visited 4 campuses, met with over 12 research centres, made the necessary connections and started the process of engaging with academia and add value to their businesses.
The feedback has been fantastic
- “whirlwind tour of the 3 universities”
- “it was brilliant to see all the different facilities available in each university”
- “great day”
- “impressive”
- “would never thought about doing this if it wasn’t for the bus”
The next Campus Bus Tour will be leaving soon. For more info contact ron@smallbusinesscan.com