The Royal Academy of Engineering is a professional fellowship, which represents the United Kingdom’s best practising engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs.
Its fellows include design leaders James Dyson and Sir Ove Arup, radar pioneer Sir George MacFarlane, and Sir Maurice Wilkes, father of the UK computer industry.
The Leaders In Innovation Fellowship is a pinnacle programme under The Newton Fund, bringing over 200 leading engineers from 15 countries to the UK to support them in commercialising their innovations.
The challenge
To design and deliver an education programme that’s relevant to hundreds of engineers from all corners of the world, and operating at a range of stages.
What we did with The Royal Academy Of Engineering
##Design
Taking a lead on programme design, we shifted the programme from pre-determined workshops run for each country in isolation, to one where the engineers dictated their learning goals and could learn from each other.
The programme overlapped various country visits, the workshops were redesigned to allow for greater peer-learning, and we added peer-to-peer conferences to allow for these highly-accomplished engineers and entrepreneurs to teach each other.
#Peer-Support And Training
To ensure a high bar for participants, we developed a set of experiential workshops which could quickly bring less experienced engineers to an innate understanding of topics like customer interviews, fund-raising and team formation.
We curated and facilitated a number of multi-track peer-conferences, which became the highlight of the entire programme for many of the participants, particularly those who were active entrepreneurs.
Our peer-conferences are now being used as the primary way for alumni in each region to support each other.