The weekend of January 17-18, 2014, business-savvy University of Toronto students participated in Accelerator Weekend, an entrepreneurship competition organized by the collaborative effort of Nspire and University of Toronto’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery program. Participating teams comprising of four individuals each spent over 24 hours coming up with a business opportunity that would be moulded, with the help of mentors, into a market-viable business idea.
The winners of the $500 top prize were three young first-year engineering students — Tammi Hawa, Jennifer Rovt, and Katie Gwozdecky. Their project, called Northern Spark, is a temperature controlled jacket. Although the team described the experience as “intimidating at the beginning”, at the end of the weekend the team spoke highly of the design of the event: “We got a lot of support from our mentors…There were teams that work with you.”
The Entrepreneurship Hatchery is part of the Applied Science and Engineering department at the University of Toronto and its role in promoting an entrepreneurial culture at U of T is highly commendable. Despite its affiliation with the Engineering department, the Hatchery is open to all students regardless of discipline. Accelerator Weekend is the Hatchery’s second event in the 2013-2014 academic year where prizes have been awarded for well-developed innovations. The first event, Demo Day on September 12, 2013, was won by two second-year students who created Modly — an affordable camera lighting system. They received the first ever Lacavera prize, valued at $20,000. Their innovation is currently undergoing further development to make it market-ready in the near future.
Nspire is a group of student leaders from universities across Ontario that aim to motivate and inspire students to follow through with their innovative ideas. In the spirit of creating awareness about the world of business and technology, Nspire has been organizing the National Business and Technology Conference since 2001. This year it will be held on March 21-22.
The reagents for an entrepreneurial explosion in Toronto are present; the Hatchery and Nspire are the catalysts. The question is, do University of Toronto students want to be a part of this reaction?
