Insights and resources

Looking at the ways in which the synergies between our various programmes and Centres make a difference.

Each of our research centres has unique ways to engage with non-academic organisations and, through that, to generate real world impact. This month we decided to share with you the work of the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School.

The February series of the Enterprise Tuesday series at Cambridge Judge Business School included a focus on women entrepreneurs. Here are some takeaways from one of the sessions.

Recent research published by UN Women and the World Bank has highlighted how women represent 70 per cent of the global health workforce, but make up just 25 per cent of global health leadership. This was confirmed during the global pandemic, when in most countries response teams were made up entirely of men, while the burden of unpaid care work was mostly handled by women. Healthcare, however, is not the only sector in which the gender gap shows its effects, especially in the aftermath of the global pandemic with which we are all grappling.Increasing food insecurity results in tensions in the household which increases the risk of violence[1] (this was also observed during the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa[2]). Care and support for gender-based violence survivors is now severely limited. The pandemic also poses a serious threat to women's economic activities; women are over-represented in occupations that are hit the hardest in this pandemic, such as retail, travel, leisure and hospitality. This means that more women will lose their jobs compared to men.However, as the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic exposes gaps in the response infrastructure, we might actually be faced with an opportunity for catalysing gender equality by maintaining the…

Local business and health solutions are winners in #CamvsCovid hackathon organised by MPhil in Technology Policy students. Entries focusing on local shops, the virtual shopping experience and remote health diagnostics were the winners of the #CamvsCovid: 72-hour virtual hackathon to seek solutions to problems stemming from COVID-19 (coronavirus). The hackathon last month was organised by the HackCambridge Foundation and students in the MPhil in Technology Policy programme at Cambridge Judge Business School.  The student-led initiative was designed to demonstrate "solidarity and collective action to develop novel solutions" to problems associated with the pandemic. Ten Cambridge Judge faculty and other experts participated as speakers or jurors.  Each team entering the event had 72 hours to draft its response to a pressing problem by video and text, and their 750-word text solution went through a juried review process. All the 750-word solutions, which totaled 11 entries, are being assembled into a portfolio.  "I was home in Germany, and saw the German government do something like this on a larger scale," says Darius Sultani, an MPhil in Technology Policy student at Cambridge Judge who is a key organiser of the event. "I knew the community we have at Cambridge Judge, and the School's entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, so I thought that we could use the Cambridge Judge infrastructure to do something similar." The winner of the event was entitled…

An astrophysicist by training, Dr Ghina Halabi often shoots down tall tales about outer space. Now Programme Director of EnterpriseWOMEN at Cambridge Judge Business School's Entrepreneurship Centre, she identifies five myths of female entrepreneurship. As the first woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics at a university in Lebanon, Dr Ghina M. Halabi knows a bit about new horizons. Ghina is now Programme Director of EnterpriseWOMEN at the Entrepreneurship Centre of Cambridge Judge Business School, a tailored programme for early-stage women entrepreneurs who have successfully built small businesses but haven't had the opportunity or the tools to effectively scale up. The next EnterpriseWOMEN event, on Transformative Leadership, will be held on 21 November at Cambridge Judge. Much of Ghina’s astrophysics research focuses on how stars live and die, and all the exciting adventures they experience in between.  This work entails debunking plenty of myths: her favourites include "Blackholes are a rarity in the Universe", "Stars are quiet, soundless balls of fire", and "Telescope images of celestial objects resemble their photographs if we were close enough to see them". There has also been plenty of mythmaking surrounding entrepreneurship. Although there are some high-profile UK women entrepreneurs – such as Lastminute.com co-founder…