The Big Idea Challenge is an annual competition open to London Met students, graduates and staff which seeks to unearth new and innovative ideas, and the passionate people behind them.
After closing the application process of Big Idea Challenge 2022, we were overwhelmed by the level of interest in this year’s competition. With more than 200 entries from students, graduates and staff across all areas of the university, narrowing them down to around 50 semi-finalists was quite a challenge for our judging panel.
All semi-finalists were invited to attend a bootcamp day at Accelerator, which gave them the opportunity to meet their competitors and receive tips on creating and presenting a winning pitch. Participants returned just one week later to present a one minute Dragons’ Den style pitch for their ideas.
With such an excellent range of diverse ideas entered this year, we decided to once again split the commercial category into two separate categories – Commercial for physical real word businesses and Tech for digital products and services. Plus we also created a brand new category for London Met focused ideas, which is called the London Met category.
After a few days of deliberation for our judging panel, the finalists for this years competition were chosen. And so, we are delighted to announce below all of our category finalists for Big Idea Challenge 2022.
Commercial
This category is for product and service focused business ideas that show real potential in becoming a commercial successful. These are innovative ideas that we believe people will be prepared to pay for.
Parezy
Sofia Carolina Fernandes Pontes
School of Social Sciences and Professions
Parezy is an all-in-one platform that gives first-time parents the confidence to navigate the early years with coaching sessions on finding balance, bonding and rejoining the workforce.
The City Herbarium
Kadeisha Antoine
School of Human Science
The City Herbarium is a luxury bespoke beauty service specialising in majority black owned products of high quality, non toxic ingredients focusing on health and wellbeing for lasting change.
Juice on the Go
Vicky Farkas
School of Human Science
Juice on the Go educates and prompts users to change their mindsets to create healthy and balanced approaches to eating habits by offering best quality organic juices, shakes, soups, bespoke recipes, supplements, and life coaching.
Tech
This category is for those business ideas focused on the digital world. This is where you’ll find eCommerce, platforms, apps and everything in between.
LID Sensors
Innocent Lubangakene
School of Computing & Digital Media
A non-invasive biosensor to measure hydration status in patients particularly vulnerable people in hospitals and care system based on electromagnetic (EM) waves.
Clipics
Silvia Scivales
Guildhall School of Business & Law
Clipics is an online marketplace that offers affordable professional photo and video services. It connects clients directly to different categories of services – Clipics then assigns the best professional for the job.
VR Estates
Shah Mashuk
School of Human Sciences
VR Estates enables its users to step inside a potential rental property without leaving their own front door. Users can view 3D 360º images of each room within a VR headset.
Community
Solving real-world challenges for the communities and people around them. This category for for ideas that aim to do just that.
Decent and Co
Liza Kiss
School of Computing & Digital Media
Decent and Co allow people experiencing homelessness to receive and use money from donations in a cashless society. By demystifying and allowing tracking of funds, givers can decide to simply donate or join the community and allocate what their donation could be used for by the homeless person e.g housing or food
Sancia’s Podcast
Sancia Williams
School of Social Sciences and Professions
Sancia’s Podcast promotes social change by changing the narrative and challenging the negative perception of Children & Young People in the Social Care System. Giving young people a voice to share their experience & drawing upon professional advice and information to bring awareness by educating, enlightening and edifying a wide audience.
Tell Health
Louis Oke
School of Human Sciences
A mobile health app which recommends case-specific lifestyle changes or facilitates subsidized private health screening services depending on the results of a pre-screening questionnaire. It also provides access to health information, and interaction with health professionals and institutions. The efficacy of digital health technology influenced the current PHE ‘digital-first’ policy.
Creative
As the name implies, the Creative category is for ideas that are creative – a wide range of new and unique ideas that don’t fit into the other categories.
Milking It
Paul Duffy
School of Art, Architecture and Design
Milking It will offer the delivery of free third of a pint bottles of milk to 5 primary schools in the Spitafields and Aldgate area by a horse and cart at dawn as part of the Aldgate in Twilight Festival.
Something Good
Anna Masters
School of Art, Architecture and Design
Something Good is a participatory sculpture which provides a dedicated space for gift-giving and sharing between strangers, friends, businesses and passers-by; a prompt for people to engage with acts of kindness and generosity. An open pair of hands emerge from a wall. Do they hold a gift for you, or are they waiting to accept a gift to pass on?
Beautiful Embroidery
Jeanne Izard
School of Art, Architecture and Design
Beautiful Embroidery will shine new light on embroidery by making it relatable, accessible and affordable. With ethically sourced embroidery kits and embroidery and collages workshops, doors will open for the curious minds who think they cannot achieve crafts.
Climate & Environment
This category is for ideas that make the world a cleaner, greener place that’s ready for the future. It could address energy efficiency, transportation or any other sector creating a positive impact in the environment.
AI Recycle
Muhammad Mukaram Saeed
School of Computing & Digital Media
EyeRecycle will improve the waste sorting inside recycling centres by using real-time artificial intelligence to recognise the waste chemical composition and a robotic arm performs the sorting; ultimately decreasing the cost of recycling and increasing the productivity.
Kuiper
Laura Guevara Morales
School of Art, Architecture and Design
Kuiper is a clothing brand that thinks about the future, producing stylish items in the most sustainable way, providing alternative options like organic cotton or deadstock to materials that aren’t environmentally friendly like polyester.
Pedal
Barney Sheppard
School of Art, Architecture and Design
Pedal is an app that provides cycling route options to people based on users in-the-moment location and preferences – covering multiple aspects such as preferred speed, busyness, noise, number of stop-start actions, aesthetics etc.
London Met
Brand new for 2022, this category is for ideas that are focused on London Met.
Model Smart Home
Bish Sinha
School of Computing & Digital Media
Using open-source tech Model Smart Home will bring together all the devices and mechanical parts of the home using IoT (Internet of things) and can be controlled from a phone.
Libre
Ellie Larionidou
Member of staff at London Met
Libre allows for anonymous reading – meaning researchers can access academic journals based on keyword relevance. All the details will not be revealed until the decision is taken to use an article based on its quality rather than the prestige of the author or number of citations.
Community Kitchen
Conor Murray
Member of staff at London Met
The Community Kitchen would offer cooking classes at London Met. Conor, a registered dietitian and experienced kitchen instructor, wants to help students live healthier lives by expanding knowledge of food, a balanced diet, food preparation and cooking skills.
Staff
Our staff category gives our amazing colleagues at London Met the chance to enter their own idea into the competition.
Online seated yoga
Durgha Ramji
Member of staff at London Met
Data Dashboard
Preeti Patel and Qicheng Yu
Members of staff at London Met
Libby
Athena Barrett and Sam Angeli
Member of staff at London Met