The SUSU Accelerator project was officially launched at the Activity Hall of South Ural State University on September 30th.
750 students from 11 universities expressed their wish to participate in the project. The program is designed for 3 months, during which students will be able to create teams and walk the path from an idea to a product. During this time, they will learn about marketing validation of ideas, creating business models, branding, pitching startups and promoting a product to the market. Lectures, business intensives, communication with experts, foresight sessions, master classes, and work with mentors and partners, all of this awaits the participants. The winners of the project will receive money prizes.
The Accelerator is held at SUSU for the second time now. Last year brought useful organizational experience: what moderators and business trackers to invite, how to coordinate the work of the Accelerator with the educational schedule, without interfering, for example, with the exams.
The SUSU Rector Alexander Wagner gave the welcome speech to participants of the Accelerator.
“Within three months, you will learn how to believe in yourself, in your power, and prove that technological entrepreneurship is not something out of space, but a reality. Each of you is capable of overcoming those barriers to entering the market. I wish you to enjoy every day of this program, receive advice from major experts, and ultimately become real cool entrepreneurs.”
The opening ceremony continued with a panel discussion, in which public figures, businessmen, and experts took part.
Chairman of the Chelyabinsk City Duma Andrey Shmidt suggested making Chelyabinsk the capital of technological entrepreneurship, ready for the fourth industrial revolution.
SUSU Vice-Rector for Education Marina Potapova spoke about the educational opportunities South Ural State University provides not only to its students, but also to other project participants. These opportunities include participation in a minor in technological entrepreneurship, study of digital technologies and an online course of Introduction to Technological Entrepreneurship, where students can get acquainted with the opinions of leading experts in this field.
SUSU graduates shared their stories of success. With the help of the Accelerator they were able to implement startups: from a mobile application for a fitness centre and a smart parking lot, to digital automation of an automobile industrial enterprise.
Representatives of KONAR Plant and other industrial companies shared ideas for tasks that young Accelerator participants could take on: for example, the development of a universal software template for controlling smart home appliances using the Internet of Things technology, problems of computer vision, facial recognition and movements from the 3DiVi company, detection of diseases from medical images, and more.
The event wrapped up with a lecture by the Head of the Regional Development Department of the Skolkovo Foundation, Yuriy Sibirskiy, on the development of technological entrepreneurship in Russia, what assistance the Foundation can provide to such businessmen and how to keep intellectual startupers from leaving the regions.