Innovation Lab for developing business ideas

The Innovation Lab of the ELTE Faculty of Informatics aims to support the development of business ideas of students and lecturers in a laboratory system, and at the same time to develop the entrepreneurial skills and knowledge of students and lecturers in a broad sense. Participants can start their own start-up project (interpreted as ) or join projects launched by other participants in the programme: in both cases, they will gain practical experience that is crucial for their future career, whether as researchers, entrepreneurs or companies, in the sharpest and most educational environment possible, as a (co-)founder of a business project started with their own contribution. Ideally, participants develop business ideas born from the results of their own research/studies, be it scientific students’ association results, third-year theses, doctoral dissertations or research results promising practical application. It is important, however, that the Innovation Lab does not support research and development, but innovation, i.e. market launch, productization, commercialization and entrepreneurial skill development.

The goal is for the participants of the Innovation Lab to actively participate in the program in order to advance and succeed in their own project. This is supported by regular lab sessions, intensive teamwork, and individual tasks such as market research, business modeling, conducting "customer discovery" interviews, creating "one-pagers" and "slide decks", writing blog posts, preparing for oral pitches, etc. The program intentionally gives participants as much freedom as possible to invent and shape their projects based on their own creativity and "fieldwork". The professional and business support of the participants is coordinated by the program manager, Barnabás Málnay, business developer of ELTE IK, relying on the knowledge base and personal resources of ELTE IK, as well as external mentors.

Apply until March 25, 2024 to the Innovation Lab of ELTE Faculty of Infomatics, where you will receive study credits for developing your own startup idea!

► ForwardMap is a mindmap and project management tool supplemented with a special recommendation system.

► Graffit, which allows users to "graffiti" their own photos, won the audience award at the Budapest Mobile Weekend organized that year.

► Kiwi, a social recipe and menu designer for dietitians, caught the eye of Nosalty, one of the country's largest online recipe sites, inviting team members for a chat.

► Aimed at hairdressers, beauticians and masseurs Book with me! is an online appointment booker that has started to be used by several SMEs and project promoters were even invited to a conference for beauticians to present the application to the public.

► Green Home is a hydroponic vegetable growing system at home, that allows small-scale vegetable and herb growing even in city apartments. During the Lab, two prototypes were built, which were tested by interested users in three households.

► AR Menu develops augmented reality-based menus for catering establishments, allowing restaurant visitors to see what the delicacies on their menu will look like on their plates before ordering.

► Speakerz is designed to coordinate portable music playback devices. Devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) entered into the app combine the music they want to play into a common playlist, which is then played simultaneously by the devices on the network.

► Deckery is an online card table where players can freely choose which card game they play or create. The platform contains elements of many well-known and lesser-known card games as optional functions, from which you can compile the card games and rule systems you like even without software development skills.

► UHire helps in recruitment using artificial intelligence technologies, primarily by analyzing and pre-screening CVs of job seekers.

► LiSi is an open, freely extensible e-learning system that is designed for the efficient presentation of complex problems that can be divided into steps, such as mathematical formulas and proofs.

► The list of project ideas can be viewed at the following links: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

► "Thank you for the last few months, I really enjoyed the lab and learned a lot. In the summer, I also started my own project, using what I learned during the lab. In November I gave a successful pitch presentation, thanks to which I was able to raise thousands of euros. Our accounting started in December, and the company will also start in January. This is all essentially due to the lab and the utilization of what has been learned there. I'm facing some brutally difficult months. On behalf of the entire group, I would like to thank you for the help and incubation we received." (2020 participant)

► "... let me say thank you for the whole InnoLab. Honestly, in my first year at university, this class definitely had the biggest impact on me, it was all very motivating and interesting. It's something that I've been thinking about for a long time, and I chose it as my topic for a talk I gave in Sopron (if you would take a look: youtube link). So thank you for the inspiring topic and your attitude, both of which have had a huge impact on me. (2018 participant)

► I am …, I participated in the Innovation Lab as a member of the … project. Since then, we have been doing business together with ..., a former ELTE student, and managed to achieve a monthly income of HUF 5 million in three months. We currently have two developers working for us, and we plan to expand the team with a marketer and two more developers. We believe we have managed to lay the foundations to make it realistic for us to create a growing company. We work 80-90 hours a week, we have an office and we even moved to be 10 minutes apart to save time. We want to learn, develop and grow as fast as possible! Currently, this income comes from developer activities, but we think it's too difficult to scale beyond a certain point. That's why we want to move towards product development. The first goal set is to find the right market and a problem in the market. Can we talk sometime? (2018 participant)

►"I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for the work You have invested in the Innovation Lab for two years, thanks to which I and the others have become rich with valuable knowledge and even approach! I don't think I would have dared to think about implementing my own business / innovative idea if I hadn't encountered the startup methodology within the framework of the Lab, and I only know the legal-financial hurdle that I did before. The lectures and practical tasks helped me put a concept above each sub-process." (2018 and 2019 participants)