About Mind Your Head
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 3rd 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 28th 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 - 3rd October 2014
Ideas event
On the evening of 3rd 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 - 28th 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