{"id":549,"date":"2012-07-02T15:51:27","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T15:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=549"},"modified":"2012-07-02T15:51:27","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T15:51:27","slug":"heather-richardsons-bid-wins-epsrc-commercial-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/?p=549","title":{"rendered":"Heather Richardson’s bid wins EPSRC Commercial Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of months ago a news item on the OU Home page caught my eye. It was the launch of a Commercial Challenge competition for researchers and research students who had come up with a business idea as a result of their work. Entrants to the competition would get training on Intellectual Property and Academic Enterprise, and could then put together a proposal for a short project to explore the feasibility of their idea.\"\"<\/a> There were two \u00a32000 prizes on offer to research students, which would allow the winners to cover any costs incurred while they were carrying out the project. The competition was linked to the EPSRC \u2013 the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council \u2013 which might not be the first place a creative writer would think of looking for funding, but I figured I had nothing to lose by having a go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m three years into a part time PhD in Creative Writing, working on an historical novel set in 17th<\/sup> century Edinburgh, and recently I\u2019ve been thinking about ways of using the knowledge I\u2019ve gained. I worked for many years in Sales and Marketing before moving into Higher Education, and I\u2019m interested in the idea of creative entrepreneurship. I\u2019m also a bit of a gadget freak, and am excited by the educational potential of technology such as smartphones and tablet computers. The last couple of years have seen the arrival of some brilliant iPad apps, such as Faber\u2019s app version of T S Eliot\u2019s The Wasteland<\/em>, complete with PDFs of one of Eliot\u2019s early drafts, annotated by W H Auden. All these elements \u2013 my research, my interest in entrepreneurship and my enthusiasm for gadgets – came together in the idea of a short Creative Writing course delivered in an app format. Because the focus of my research is Historical Fiction, I decided to propose an app specifically on that genre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The training sessions were very useful, but it was clear that most of the other candidates were from disciplines such as computing and engineering \u2013 the areas most likely to product inventions with a commercial application. Sometimes in the Arts and Humanities we have a tendency to think that we don\u2019t produce a commercial \u2018product\u2019 (apart from the lucky few who write a best-seller) but in actual fact there is a potentially huge market for the knowledge and expertise we all have. That\u2019s what I told myself as I put my proposal together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was delighted to hear that I\u2019d got through to the final round of the competition. This meant I had to pitch my idea, Dragons\u2019 Den-style, to a panel of experts. Although this was a bit nerve-racking it also proved a useful process, as the panel gave me some practical and encouraging advice about my idea.\"\"<\/a> Later that day I got an email telling me my idea was one of the winners \u2013 a brilliant, if unexpected, result! I\u2019m now about to embark on my project. My three main objectives are to map out the course content in more detail, conduct some market research to identify customer needs and work with developers to get a clear idea of the costs of producing the app. I\u2019d be delighted to hear from anyone who\u2019d like to contribute their views to the market research: if you\u2019re interested in being involved please email me on Heather.Richardson@open.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of months ago a news item on the OU Home page caught my eye. It was the launch of a Commercial Challenge competition for researchers and research students who had come up with a business idea as a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[108,110,109],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards-and-prizes","tag-app","tag-creative-entrepreneurship","tag-funding-bid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/WritingTutors\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}