The West Africa Sustainable Engineering Network for Development (WASEND) has organised its maiden capacity building workshop on the theme “The Transition from Research to Start-Ups”. The event was hosted by the College of Engineering at KNUST on 18th November, 2021 via the Zoom platform. The aim of the workshop was to equip WASEND members with the tools necessary to make the transition from research ideas and concepts to start-ups and businesses that make meaningful contribution to the economy of sub-region.
WASEND is a network of four West African Colleges of Engineering:
- College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
- International Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (2IE), Burkina Faso
- University of Science, Engineering and Technology, Gambia
- College of Engineering, University of Abomey Calavi, Benin
The rationale of WASEND is to enhance the individual Africa Center of Excellence’s (ACE) contribution to the knowledge economy by building synergies among the ACEs.
Prof. Johnson Asumadu, of the Western Michigan University was the resource person. Prof. Asumadu is also an alumnus of the College of Engineering, KNUST and currently serves as an Advisory Board Member of the KNUST Engineering Education Project (KEEP).
Prof. Asumadu highlighted issues such as: customer discovery, top 20 reasons start-ups fail, value proposition and customer segmentation, market segmentation and common mistakes start-ups make.
He noted that research concepts and ideas have a good chance of succeeding as start-ups if they solve real-life problems.
Participants expressed satisfaction with the workshop in the evaluation form that was shared after the session.
Please click https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nXZ8H1CQVZjQDlQ5aH8ZbTXKYiCp1OI2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100843132195621956409&rtpof=true&sd=true to view the presentation.