Venture Centre

Pressure Cooker

Use your knowledge and skills to come up with an innovative and sustainable idea!

The pressure cooker of the AUAS Venture Centre is a program with which students learn step by step how they can develop an innovative idea for a situation where change is desperately needed. The premise is that having a good idea does not require luck or to be especially gifted, but everyone - and therefore every student - has the capacity to come up with ideas for impactful innovations!

How does it work?

During the pressure cooker, students go step by step through the ideation process. For example, they start by identifying their own passions, skills, knowledge and networks, after which teams are created that then look for situations where making a difference with innovation is so desperately needed, for this purpose the UN Sustainable Development Goals are used.

Various steps are then taken to gain insight into the situation(s), to map out end users and ultimately to brainstorm about possible solutions. The end point of the pressure cooker is that each team makes a low-fidelity prototype or mock-up of their idea.

Because the process is divided into different steps and an explanation is given at each step, the pressure cooker can be done for every student, regardless of study background or prior knowledge. In addition, at each step it is not only explained what needs to be done, but also why, in this way students develop sustainable competences such as spotting opportunities, imagining and valuing ideas.

And it is important that the pressure cooker lends itself perfectly to being done with students from different fields of study, which increases the chance of coming up with impactful innovative ideas.

The pressure cooker methodology can be used in two ways:

Timed Events

During an event of 2 x 4-8 hours, a group of 15 to 30 students, in teams of 3 to 4, go through the steps of the pressure cooker. All steps then have a time limitation, which sometimes results in less detailed steps, but under pressure everything becomes fluid and this often promotes creativity.

Self-Paced

But students (teams) can also go through the steps individually at their own pace. In this way there is often more time to come to more detailed elaborations, but the time pressure element is largely missing. It does ensure that students who have previously participated in a pressure cooker can use the method themselves 'for real'.

Meedoen of organiseren

The Venture Centre offers the pressure cooker in various ways:

  • Educational programmes and minors can use the pressure cooker to let their students work on these (entrepreneurship) skills within the curriculum

  • Centres of Expertise and Lecturers can use the pressure cooker to make the connection between their (research) themes and education by making students think about new creative solutions and sustainable innovations.

  • Expert partners can organize a pressure cooker event around a challenge that is important to them in collaboration with the Venture Center.

  • Study associations can organize a pressure cooker event with and for their (prospective) members specifically aimed at their field

  • Individual students and student teams can use the methodology to search for an innovative and sustainable idea themselves.

Are you interested in doing the pressure cooker, using it in education or organizing a pressure cooker event? Please contact the AUAS Venture Centre - venturecentre@hva.nl

Na afloop

The aim of the pressure cooker is to let students experience how they can come up with new creative solutions and sustainable innovations. But of course the pressure also leads to students who want to continue with the idea they have come up with.

In order to realize this idea, they can receive a lot of support from the AUAS Venture Centre and participate in the programs we have to offer. For example, they can:

  • participate in the Call for Ideas and the associated Poster Competition
  • look for team members with the Call for Team Members
  • and of course also register for the 10K Incubator

Do you have questions about this? Then you can always make an appointment with the Student Startup Helpdesk.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Published by  Entrepreneurship 5 December 2021