Henley Business School students interview entrepreneurs at the Festival of Digital Disruption 2020

The FoDD is partnered with Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship (HCfE) and was held between 16-20 November 2020 as a virtual event from the Curious Lounge. The event encourages participants to consider careers in creative, digital and tech businesses, or even start their own business in the field, and over 400 participants connected to the FoDD, many of them Henley Business School students.

Each day focused on a different topic. The week started off with an interactive 'Be More Pirate' session and a talk by Lego Ventures. Tuesday was all about creative businesses and starred Darren Browne, the University of Reading’s Commercial Director, sharing the vision for the Thames Valley Science Park and exciting plans for Cine Valley alongside talks by Charisma.AI and CuteCircuit. Wednesday's theme was 'Tech for Good' and starred Lucie Glenday, the founder of Mysense.AI, and Solveiga Pakstaite, founder of Mimica and an entrepreneur who successfully received investment from Henley Business Angels.

The Henley Business School students led the entrepreneur interviews on Thursday. These entrepreneurs covered a wide range of sectors and included Yesika Aguilera (co-founder of Tespack), Maximilian Birner (co-founder of BoxHub), Max Buchan (founder of World Technologies), James Layfield (founder of Clearfind), Ikenna Ordor (founder of Starr Luxury Group), Rikkie Rosenlund (founder of BorrowmyDoggy), Lucy Rose-Walker (co-founder of Entrepreneurial Spark) and Amy Williams (co-founder of Good Loop).

Louize Clarke, founder of Curious Lounge, spoke highly of the Henley Business School students as the event concluded:

"A massive thanks to entrepreneurship students Abir Tarique Hridoy, Craig Davison, Elliott Chard, Ioulia Dermon, James Cook, Keanu George, Nur Sarah Mohd-Haslizan and Karin Zhang-Wei, who did an amazing job. They took the time to prepare, ran their sessions like clockwork and we’ve received great feedback from the entrepreneurs, who really enjoyed the sessions."

Further details about the Festival of Digital Disruption can be found on the event website.