20 March, 2018

On Tuesday 20th March 2018, eleven entrepreneurial individuals attended the Lifelong Learning Festival event, ‘Entrepreneurial Skills for 65 and Beyond’ hosted by the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence. The event which took place in the Rubicon Business Incubator Centre, in CIT provided a taster programme for older participants to explore their own personal skillset and life experience and relate these to entrepreneurial skills, at a time when they are considering retirement or are already retired.

The day started with exploring what a full training programme should contain. Then, food entrepreneur, Dermot Twomey of Healthy You, spoke about his entrepreneurial journey which is still ongoing into his seventh decade. The Marshmallow challenge followed and spaghetti, sticky tape, string and a marshmallow enticed participants to see who could innovate the tallest free-standing structure, with a marshmallow on top! A few marshmallows were eaten during this challenge. The CIT enterprise intern, Emilie O’Mahony, conducted a tour of the Incubator facilities outlining the variety of businesses resident in the incubator. NEW FRONTIERS manager, Liam Fitzgerald, explained how the Rubicon, experienced in supporting entrepreneurs, offer guidance from idea stage to market entry. 

The event formed part of preliminary research for a PhD programme, SmARtEST, within CIT to develop general entrepreneurial skills training for people at or over 65 years of age. The acronym SmARtEST stands for Smart Ageing and Renewal through Entrepreneurial Skills Training and the project aims to investigate the benefits and barriers of being entrepreneurial in later life stages.

For more about the Rísim Scholarship PhD Programme, click here.