Student Innovation Projects

About the project

Is your organisation facing a commercial challenge, or a business issue? Do you want to see what recommendations our students can come up with?

Student Innovation Projects offer students the opportunity to work with an employer on a brief and have a real impact on their business need. Our students have researched and presented recommendations to many companies on diverse topics, such as:

• Enhancing marketing and social media strategies
• Promoting staff diversity and retention
• Adopting eco-friendly practices to reduce carbon footprints
• Improving customer experience

What are Student Innovation Projects?

Student Innovation Projects enable businesses to collaborate with our students, receiving fresh perspectives and inspiring solutions to overcome their challenges:

• Each project will be 4-weeks in length
• Each project will have 1 or 2 student teams allocated, and the students will come from a range of subjects and year groups
• Students act as consultants on a real-life business issue, conducting research and recommending innovative solutions
• In preparation, students will attend a training session hosted by our Work Experience team prior to the project commencing

Why participate?

• No cost to you
• Enjoy the additional resource to provide dedicated consulting skills to a business issue
• Gain new perspectives on your organisation's issues
• Receive insightful recommendations from students through a final presentation and report
• Be a part of enhancing our students’ employability, which is key to their success as graduates
• Recruitment and training of all students is organised by the University

Our expectations from you

Once the project begins, your involvement will be as follows:

• Have an initial meeting with your student team(s) and provide continued support to them via email, telephone and other meetings as required
• Providing students with the necessary information and resources they will require to complete the project
• Attending the student presentation and final report submission, along with a representative from Careers, Employability and Student Enterprise. The presentation must take place on University grounds between 09:00 and 17:00, Monday to Friday

How to apply

Please note, applications for 2026/27 have now closed. Please contact us to discuss other ways to engage with our students.

To apply for a Student Innovation Project, you are required to do the following:

For further information on Student Innovation Projects, please refer to our Student Innovation Project Employer Handbook and example briefs below from previous company projects:

• An initial expression of interest, please complete our Microsoft Form
• We will then assess your idea and ask you to complete a health and safety questionnaire and confirm you hold adequate Public Liability Insurance, or purchase it on the basis that your project is successful
• You'll then provide a formal project brief for consideration and provide the details of at least two contacts within the company
• You'll sign our client agreement form to confirm your participation in the programme
• We may need to hold a final Teams meeting or telephone call with you before accepting you on the programme
• Community Bus Project
• The Musication Station
• Using IoT and AI in Building Maintenance
• Improving Toilet Accessibility
• Simplifying Biodiversity Inputs
• Carbon Footprint Reduction

Contact us

If you would like to discuss our Student Innovation Projects in more detail, please contact us:

Both teams made some fantastic recommendations and did excellent research, all of which were worth sharing with our CEO, who was incredibly impressed and passed on huge thanks!

• Telephone: +44(0)23 8059 3501
• Email: employ@southampton.ac.uk

Research areas