Norrsken Student Innovation Lab FAQ

What is the Student Innovation Lab?
Student Innovation Lab is a co-created platform where young, creative talent can utilize their skills and expertise to support the impact entrepreneurs of Norrsken House, and in doing so, develop their skills and gain more experience and in the end, hopefully, start a successful business. The Student Innovation Lab is a flexible, evolving platform and structure that allow students to apply their learnings and experiences from their studies to enable and support entrepreneurs that are working on societal challenges.

What is included in the program?
The program is 100% self-facilitated, meaning that there is no curriculum, no mentors, no coaches. The program is an opportunity to kick-start your own business/agency by getting involved in the Norrsken network and becoming members of the community for a limited amount of time. Norrsken provides full-time memberships for 5 months in exchange for participating in the program.

What is the purpose/goal of the Student Innovation Lab?
The program has two goals: 1) To support impact entrepreneurs by providing them with your skills and knowledge. Every batch of students will offer different kinds of support depending on the skillset and experience level of the batch. 2) To help you kick-start your business/agency in a real-world environment within a framework.

What are the requirements for participating students?

• To support a minimum of 4 Norrsken member companies per month.
• To provide a minimum of 15 hours of support to Norrsken member companies per month.
• To provide a monthly report to Norrsken, showcasing what has been done, which companies you've worked with, what you've achieved etc.

How long is the program?
The program runs twice per year for 5 months at a time:

• February-June
• August-December

We are 2-3 students who would like to start an agency together, how do we apply as a group?
You can just mention that in your application and include all your portfolios/relevant links in the free text fields. We preferably want teams of 2-3 people applying, so that's great!

We are also wondering what the expectations are for the students, are we expected to develop a whole product for a company or will there be smaller tasks that we are going to work with?
The setup is that we define X amount of hours / X amount of companies that you consult for free. Then it's very much up to you how you structure that workflow. Most of the tasks will be smaller tasks and general input/feedback to support our entrepreneurs.

Will we get a mentor from Norrsken or is this something we should fix ourselves?
It is up to you to find relevant mentors and coaches. Norrsken provides a platform for you to kickstart your business in a real-world environment with plenty of opportunities for you to learn and develop. As participants in the Student Innovation Lab, you will get access to all the events, activities, training, and coachings that are generally offered to Norrsken House members.

You can read more about SoLucy, the first alumni batch of the Student Innovation Lab, in this article.