On 22 February we are turning Storm into a Speakers’ Corner and invite everyone with an idea, project, or thought to come practice their pitching skills.
Open Pitch is an interactive event, structured in a way that provides new perspectives to the person on stage and the audience. For the speaker, it is an opportunity to receive valuable feedback from an audience of individuals with different backgrounds and competencies. The aim is to build a friendly environment to enable improvements to both ideas and pitching techniques. For the audience, it is a chance to get inspired and practice how to give constructive feedback.
Storm’s Open Pitch is part of February’s coworking day for students. Before lunch, Mau innovation’s advisors and Drivhusets coaches will be on-site to support you with your pitch preparations. After lunch, it is time to pitch!
On 22 February, Mariia Tyshchenko, Executive Director at NGO Poruch, will visit our coworking for students to discuss the power of action. Seeing herself as an activist, Mariia has channelled her convictions into tireless work for human rights, equality, and peace in her homeland Ukraine. She will share her story and work during her talk, focusing on the relationship between research, people, and systems.
About Mariia Maria Tyshenko is a university researcher, honorary doctor at Malmö University and executive director at the NGO Poruch. Through Poruch, which stands for “ready to help”, Mariia Tyshchenko has set up around 200 projects, mostly focusing on gender policy and young people or people with disabilities in Ukraine. Her projects are grounded in human rights and are run in collaboration with local actors and international partners. Of current interest are the projects in Donetsk and Luhansk: Supporting Recovery and Sustainable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons and Inspiring peace in Ukraine: Development of children and youth through nonviolence. The latter ran until the outbreak of war. She is also working on a scientific project in RUCARR: The Politics of Gender Inclusion of Internal and External Ukrainian Refugees in the Context of the War.
Den 8 mars välkomnar vi dig, som på ett eller annat sätt medverkat till att bygga broar mellan studenter, näringsliv och organisationer de senaste tre åren, till en heldagskonferens på plats i Kristianstad.
Med hjälp av samarbets- och idéutvecklingsmetoder, som utvecklats framgångsrikt inom projektet Framtidens Entreprenöriella Arbetskraft (FEA), bjuder vi in till en interaktiv konferens med fokus på att hitta nya vägar för att ta oss an framtidens unga arbetskraftsutmaningar tillsammans.
Under dagen varvas resultat och goda exempel från FEA-projektet med inspiration, nätverkande och samskapande idéutveckling kring de utmaningar vi står inför. Konferensen är kostnadsfri och inga förberedelser krävs.
Pre-loved furniture finds new love through rental service
Sweden is one of the best countries in the world when it comes to recycling waste. At the same time,consumption is increasing, and more waste is produced. To recycle is, therefore, not enough. Instead, we need to reduce our consumption and minimize the amount of waste we produce.
To minimize recourse use, former Malmö University students Vaishnavi Srinivasan, Max Pangerl and Jed Manguera, co-founded Cohabit – a circular furniture rental service. The service is a social enterprise that prolongs the life of discarded but significant pieces of furniture while offering a sustainable, affordable, and flexible furnishing solution to students moving to the south of Sweden.
Co-founders of Cohabit, Jed Manguera, Vaishnavi Srinivasan, Max Pangerl.
The idea was born when Vaishnavi came to Sweden and decided to furnish her apartment in six weeks, only with secondhand furnishers. A lot of work had to be put into it and she felt that there must be an easier way. That is when she got the idea of a circular furniture rental service, focusing primarily on international students.
Sweden is extremely sustainability oriented, and it occurred to me how strange it is that there is no rental alternative for household furnitures in Sweden. My teacher told me about the Leapfrogs scholarship, that gives Malmö University students the opportunity to explore and develop an idea during the summer. I decided to submit my idea about a circular rental service for leapfrogs and see what happens. I realized that I did not know how big the market was or how big the need was for a circular furniture rental service, so I applied for the scholarship hoping I would get a chance to explore it further.
Vaishnavi Srinivasan, co-founder of Cohabit
While waiting for the jury’s decision Vaishnavi started to talk about the idea with her classmates in the master’s programme, Leadership for Sustainability. Together with her classmates Jed and Max, she decided to explore it further as a school project.
The project got a lot of good feedback, and their classmates’ feedback helped them develop their idea further. However, they had still not conducted proper market research and they did not really know whether there was a real problem that affected more than themselves and their classmates. During spring they found out that Vaishnavi got awarded the Leapfrogs scholarship and they decided to use the Leapfrog scholarship together as a team.
Without the scholarship we probably would have settled with what we knew from our school project but being awarded Leapfrogs made it possible for us to conduct market research which validated the problem
Vaishnavi Srinivasan, co-founder of Cohabit
The result of the market research motivated the team to create their first pilot and test the idea. The pilot was rolled out successfully in August 2022 with 23 subscribers.
Essentially, we wanted to reach more customers but in the process of building the capacity to serve the needs of our subscribers, both when it comes to storage space, transport, and administration, we realized that we could not accommodate the needs of more than that.
Max Pangerl, co-founder of Cohabit
Picture of student apartment furnished by Cohabit.
At that point, the team did not have proper storage space and Vaishnavis’ apartment was filling up quickly with the secondhand furniture they collected for free from all around Skåne. The summer ended up being an intense learning journey for the team. They needed to figure out how to do their inventory, how to set up a basic warehousing system, and how to transport the furniture, while at the same time working on their marketing strategy.
However, Leapfrogs offered them a lot o support and during the summer the team got access to a networking portal for all students being awarded the scholarship and they attended the workshops provided by Leapfrogs. They also received coaching from Malmö University’s innovation advisers and Drivhuset coaches.
Through the Leapfrogs programme, we got into this network of students, innovation advisors and supporters. They referred us to new connections and people interested in the idea, from which a lot of opportunities came.
Jed Manguera, co-founder of Cohabit
One year after Vaishnavi applied for the Leapfrogs scholarship, Cohabit is in the process of rolling out its second pilot. Their goal is to collaborate with housing agencies and make a bigger pilot between January and June, so that by August 2023 they will have the capacity to meet the furniture needs of the international students coming to the south of Sweden.
Reflecting on the whole Leapfrogs experience I feel that it really made a difference for me personally. It gave me a reason to put the time and effort into it because it was not a monetary investment that I was making myself. As a student, I do not have the capacity to put that money into an idea at a stage where it is still untested. The scholarship gave us the opportunity to test the idea knowing that it is okay if it does not work. It is a huge safety net, and that’s not something that a lot of entrepreneurs get.
On 13 December Lena Staafgård, Chief Operating Officer at Better Cotton, will join Get down to it to talk about her experience of creating systems change within the cotton sector – a deeply conservative sector with a poor social and environmental track record. Lena will talk about how you create change in a sector that lacks transparency and trust and how she has navigated the corridors of power, largely filled with the archetypal figure of power – the middle-aged, white man.
About Lena As a not-yet-middle-aged woman, Lena Staafgård joined Better Cotton in 2010, when it was a small start-up organisation aiming to transform the entire cotton sector. With no prior experience in either cotton or agriculture or commodity markets, the journey since has certainly not been straight, nor always easy. Today, Lena is the Chief Operating Officer at Better Cotton, the world’s largest cotton sustainability initiative. With close to 200 staff members in just under ten countries worldwide, Better Cotton promotes sustainable agriculture and engages global supply chains through sourcing and investing in farm-level support programmes.
We are taking some time off during the holidays to spend with our friends and families. Storm will therefore be closed and no bookings will be processed during this time. We are back on 9 January with a lot of toys and goodies on our sleigh.
Open session: Get advice from an innovation advisor
Every Tuesday between 14:00-15:00, innovation advisors from MaU Innovation are ready for discussions through Zoom.
Drop in to ask questions related to your own work or listen in to conversations about research and education, in regards to impact, utilization and innovation. Topics discussed are everything from financing and utilization to what innovation is and what counts as knowledge assets.
The room is open between 14:00-15:00 and you are welcome to join and leave whenever you wish during this time. For more information about our open sessions, please contact Joa Falke.
On 9 November, journalist Fredrik Önnevall will guest Get down to it on Storm to talk about courage. What limitations govern us without us knowing it, where do we set our own boundaries and how do we build the ability to trust our own judgement?
About Fredrik Over the years, Fredrik Önnevall has worked as a correspondent in Beijing for Swedish Television, made travel reports, worked as a reporter and editor for Sydnytt and been a Television Show Host in several different initiatives for Swedish Television, including Kinas mat and Fosterland. Through his chosen profession, Fredrik has asked uncomfortable questions to those he interviewed. He has faced, and interviewed nationalists from different countries, followed his drive to the other side of the world and made a crucial decision to trust his own judgement, knowing that it could have major consequences.
Under hösten bjuder Mau innovation in forskare och undervisande personal på Malmö universitet till diskussioner om entreprenörskap i undervisningen. Över en kopp kaffe tar vi del av inspirationsföreläsningar och delar erfarenheter, tips och idéer. Innehållet är dynamiskt och tas fram av deltagarna, med utgångspunkt i behov och nyfikenhet.
Could your research be implemented outside of academia? Are you interested in mapping out your options and finding out which possibilities are at hand? Take the opportunity to meet with an Innovation Advisor and start your journey towards research impact.
In an individual, 30-minute digital or physical meeting, you will discuss your research with an experienced Innovation Advisor and get advice on how to move forward towards utilization, or alternative ways to make an impact with your research outside academia.
After the meeting, our aim is that you will have a clearer idea of where your research could create an impact and of what support is available to you through the Innovation Office at Malmö University.
