Wits University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Workshop – July 7-11, 2025

The purpose of this workshop was to show our Wits students and researchers that the University’s third mission of engaging with the community can be through innovation and entrepreneurship offering innovative solutions that can meet the needs of the society and the markets to make S Africa a better place. Good ideas and innovations can be created at the university and these ideas are taken to the market through entrepreneurship through the support of the entire ecosystem.

We had about 40 participants for the workshop. Their background ranged from undergrads, postgrads, researchers and a couple of early entrepreneurs with engineering, science, commerce, health science degrees.  The final projects were chosen in a session I called “marketplace of ideas and skills” where 18 ideas were proposed and the participants had the opportunity to market their ideas or skills that someone else needed.  In many cases, the ideas were combined based on their common themes or complementary skills they had. It was a pleasure to see this happen real time. From the weeklong workshop, the participants received information that was needed to take their ideas to the market – opportunity assessment, business modeling, finance, marketing and sales and information about the South African entrepreneurial ecosystem.  They very diligently applied what they learned during their presentations for their final pitch through many group activities. 

The final day presentations were judged from a panel consisting of representatives from CSIR, TIA, DSTI, Wits Enterprise and WIC. 

According to the panel of judges (and in my opinion too), all projects have the potential of being taken to the market with more refinement of the value proposition and business model.  In fact, the judges even volunteered to talk to the groups later if they are still interested beyond the workshop and mentioned about possible sources of support for them. The team Urban Harvest had the best overall coverage of idea to market and had the highest score according to the judging criteria provided to all the participants in advance.   For additional details see: