Initially, we were part of Make-A-Difference by Faculty of Natural Sciences (FoNS-MAD). It has a similar nature as IP Wise Up in the sense that it offers a 8-week placement in summer. However, it did not offer the two weeks of Intellectual Property Workshop before the placement. We got through the first two rounds before being eliminated in the final round. That was at the end of May 2015, two weeks before the start of the final exam for 2nd year Biochemists. Having put in a few months’ worth of effort into a project that we believed in so strongly, that was a bitter pill to swallow.
Rebecca from FoNS-MAD kindly suggested that we could try our luck on IP Wise Up if we were keen to work on our ideas. We pulled ourselves together and during the last few days of our exam period and applied for IP Wise Up. We were so glad we ended up here.
IP Wise Up changed our perspective
FoNS-MAD was a technical competition that had a focus on the strength of the scientific theory. In contrast, IP Wise Up offers a 2-week training programme on intellectual property and marketing.
Our focus in the past had been making the perfect prototype with high performance and great accuracy. However, through the IP Wise Up workshop, we learnt about the different parts of the value chain used to penetrate a market. It is important to begin with the end in mind. Before investing the time and energy into making a product, it is important to find where your market is and whether there is a realistic demand for it. We learnt to talk to our preferred witness without revealing our product to gain an unbiased opinion and understand the market. It is easy to lose track of the big picture while navigating through all the technical difficulties, but sometimes zooming out and examining the whole project from a distance helps to re-orientate ourselves.