Certificate In Food Innovation And Entrepreneurship (Springboard)

Course details

GMIT has developed this course to enable ambitious students to transform their ideas into new businesses. This is not a traditional classroom taught course. Students interact with a broad range of project hosts, practitioners, industry leaders and entrepreneurs and learn from them. Delivery of the course will be led by the Innovation in Business Centre at GMIT which has enabled dozens of potential entrepreneurs to take their ideas from concept to full commercialisation.

Programme Modules:

• Creative thinking and opportunity recognition, 10 Credits.

This will be a challenge based module that will help participants to think creatively from an entrepreneurial point of view and be able to view resources differently to create opportunities. There will be a strong community building exercise where soft skills of team dynamics, resilience, empathy and emotional intelligence are central themes. We will interact with local food based companies to create real applicable innovation projects in teams. The creative challenges will center around the global and local food problems society face with a goal to creating awareness of the food system among participants.

• Food Entrepreneurship, 10 credits

This module will take the ideas created in model 1 to the next level. Students will be given the skills and methodologies to assess and validate ideas. This lean start up process is novel up to date business thinking that allows new start-ups to validate an idea or use customer discovery and design thinking to develop the right products for a known market. We will interact with existing entrepreneurs for the participants to learn from in peer to peer style environment.

• Industry specific skills, 10 Credits

This module will provide the industry specific skills that will be required to bring products to market. The module will be tailored to the specific students a sample of the potential topics are product costing, HACCP and hygiene standards, product labeling design, allergen controls, margin control, culinary product design, prototyping, business planning, next stage development, financial planning, marketing , brand development and product manufacturing.

Career Opportunities:

This course is focused on forming and supporting job creators. Throughout the course participants are encouraged to seriously consider food entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to employment. There is a strong emphasis on the development of implementable and sustainable economic and social entrepreneurship ventures and projects.

In addition to the development of technical and transferable skills required for entrepreneurial activity, we also offer individual practical supports to participants who have identified business ideas, which they wish to pursue further. In such cases we act as a start-up platform introducing participants to experts and mentors as well as potential sources of funding.

For those seeking employment, rather than hoping to create employment, the course provides participants with sought-after skills in the areas of creative thinking, innovation, opportunity recognition, networking and team building, entrepreneurial thinking and action. Confidence building and ability to act autonomously, as well as peer-to-peer network development will be a strong features of our course. Standard CV and interview preparation are offered to all participants but due to the nature of the course are not always required.

Entry Requirements:

Honours Degree (Level 8) in any discipline, or an Ordinary Degree (Level 7) in any discipline plus two years of relevant experience working/ self employed in the area of food entrepreneurship/ innovation, or five years working/ self employed of relevant experience in the area of food entrepreneurship/ innovation.