Five teams from across GKN have gained support for their proposals from the GKN Executive Committee at the recent GKN 10x Accelerator Programme Pitch Event.

The event saw participants from four countries and all three divisions work together in a four day workshop to finalise their proposals, create business plans and prepare for the half day pitch event - all of which were held in a warehouse studio in Shoreditch, London.

Turning ideas into a reality

The entrepreneurs pitched their ideas individually and each was followed by a Q&A session where the GKN Executive Committee had the chance to challenge their ideas and implementation plans.

The exciting projects included an advanced algorithm and software solution for mathematically optimised scheduling in “job shop” production environments, a step-change in energy efficiency within commercial air transport, hybrid electric boundary layer ingestion technology, and machine learning to decipher and improve manufacturing. The GKN Executive committee were very impressed to say the least.

Empowering its employees

The 10x Accelerator Programme is GKN’s corporate start-up accelerator, offering entrepreneurial GKN employees a platform to develop and test their game changing ideas that offer a magnitude of improvements over the status quo. The programme is designed around lean startup principles.

“Through the 10x Programme I have discovered that I truly want to be an entrepreneur and also that I do infact have enough engineering background to come up with a truly good idea!” says Jing Lee, Lead Methodology Engineer at GKN Aerospace Services Ltd.

Join the talented women engineers at GKN

This international engineering business offers challenging and rewarding roles across multiple disciplines, and opportunities to develop professional, technical and leadership career paths.