Start in innovation
«Start in Innovation» is an organizational and subject environment in which students and mentors unite into teams and go from an idea to a real innovative technological product in demand by the market.
The foundation of the educational environment is a community of schoolchildren, teachers, parents, managers, experts and representatives of the real sector who are interested in the development of both commercial and socially oriented innovative technological entrepreneurship in Russia. The basis of the «Start in Innovation» ecosystem today is a project conference and a subject Olympiad.
The «Start in Innovation» project was born within the walls of the “Phystech-Lyceum” of Natural Sciences and Mathematics named after P.L. Kapitza in 2001 as a conference of school research papers. With the support of the Phystech-schools development foundation, the conference reached the level of the All-Russian Conference of Technological Projects and Olympiad in Natural Sciences.
Project conference and subject Olympiad
The project conference «Start in Innovation» gives schoolchildren the opportunity to acquire new competencies in project-research, engineering or technical representative activities.
On the project track, individual participants and teams of 7-11 graders go through the selection, regional and final stages to identify the best:
- Research projects
- Engineering projects
- Projects on technological entrepreneurship.
Each participant in the project conference can also compete in the individual competition. To do this, he or she must not only work on the project, but also participate in the subject Olympiad in two or three natural science subjects or social studies. To win in the individual competition, it is necessary to receive high scores for both the project and the Olympiad.
Schoolchildren can participate in the project conference without taking part in the Olympiad. However, it is impossible to participate in the Olympiad without completing a high-quality project. We welcome participants who apply their knowledge in practical work and can demonstrate success in project activities.
As part of the non-competitive program, «Start in Innovation» holds a Demo Day — a pitching session for those teams that are ready to show an investor a product prototype. Representatives of the real sector and MIPT partners are present at the Demo Day, who are ready to implement the participants’ developments and provide mentoring and expert support to the teams.
For schoolchildren and teachers
The heart of the educational environment of Start in Innovation is offline and online events for schoolchildren and teachers-project mentors.
We hold summer and winter schools during the holidays, where children can:
- improve their subject knowledge and get involved in project activities within our areas (for beginners);
- pump up their projects from a prototype to MVP in an accelerator format (for teams that are already making a real product).
In the fall and spring, «Start in Innovation» organizes online project trials. Any project team from the Russian Federation can come for a trial run and share their project idea. Experts from the Phystech Lyceum named after P. L. Kapitsa and Start in Innovation will give recommendations on further work and successful performance in our competition.
For teachers — project mentors, we conduct free advanced training courses, where we teach product thinking and work on technology projects.
Schoolchildren and teachers can also join our open online events to get support in project activities. Announcements are published in advance on our Telegram channel.
