About Mind Your Head

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Supported by Awards for All

Headway Cambridgeshire is asking every business in Cambridgeshire, as well as school and college students, public sector employees and individual members of the public, to take part in an exciting new initiative called Mind Your Head - the Headway Cambridgeshire Grand Challenge.

Mind Your Head is an ambitious, Cambridgeshire-wide initiative with 2 main goals:

To crowd source ideas for products and services that will help improve the quality of life of people with acquired brain injury, or to prevent brain injury in the first place
To raise funds for Headway Cambridgeshire so the charity can help more people

What's involved?

We're asking everyone in the county of Cambridgeshire to join us at the new University Technical College in Cambridge on the evening of Friday 3^rd October when all you have to do is form into teams of SOLVERS and come up with ideas for new products or services that could help people with brain injury as well as those who care for them. We'll have lots of experts on hand to help you.

At the end of the evening, if your team has a good idea, you can enter it into the Mind Your Head Challenge. If you do, you'll have about 8 weeks to develop it into a business-based solution. Then, on the evening of Friday 28^th November, we'll get everyone together again to hear a selection of the ideas that various teams have developed. We're hoping some investors will join in (just like Dragons' Den - only a friendly version!)

Mind Your Head involves 4 main groups of participants – Seekers, Solvers, Sages and Supporters. You can take part as a Solver, Sage, Supporter or even all three.

Solvers – anyone willing to join a team to help brainstorm and develop ideas for new products and services i.e. age, background and profession are irrelevant. You do not need to be an inventor, entrepreneur, scientist, engineer or even in business.
Sages - people with expertise who are willing to donate some of their time to help the solvers (e.g. experts in design, engineering, business, law, clinical/medicine).
Supporters - organisations, individuals or groups of individuals who are willing to donate some money to support Headway via the Challenge.
Seekers - people who have a brain injury (Headway's clients) and would like to improve their quality of life.

Sages must also become Supporters.

Stage 1 - 3^rd October 2014
Ideas event

On the evening of 3^rd October 2014, we will host an event at which selected Seekers will describe the challenges and frustrations they encounter in everyday life. Based on this information, the Solvers will form into teams (ideally teams will comprise a wide range of skills, backgrounds and ages) and the teams will start to brainstorm ideas. Based on these ideas, they may need to poach or recruit talents from other teams introducing an element of competition. At the end of the event, the teams with ideas they want to take forward into the Challenge will register their team with Headway.

The teams can be any size, for example, a team might be an entire school, a church, a society, a football team, a company, a university department, a group of friends or an ad hoc group that meets and forms through the Challenge. Each team will have a team leader and a team name. Teams can recruit new members at any time. The teams will be given 8 weeks to progress their ideas and develop a Business Case. Throughout this period, they will have access to the Seekers, for additional information on needs; meeting rooms including Headway in Fulbourn; and the Sages.

Stage 2 - 28^th November 2014
Pitch your Project event

In November, a second event will be held at which selected teams will present their business case to a large audience including the Seekers, all the other Solvers, the Sages and Supporters. If ideas are eventually commercialised, Headway Cambridgeshire will be entitled to share in benefits accruing. Such benefits will be negotiated on a case by case basis.

Become a Solver
Become a Supporter