In one week, the E-Lab will host the second LLMxLaw Hackathon in partnership with Standford’s CodeX. Following the inaugural edition of the competition in 2024, the hackathon aims to bring teams together to experiment and solve problems rapidly by developing prototypes that challenge conventional approaches and expand technological boundaries. An undoubtedly thrilling environment, the event also prompts deeper reflection on the potential outcomes of enacting faster paced technological solutions. In this week’s blog, practicing advocate and Visiting Scholar in AI Governance at Downing College, Demetrius Floudas addresses an evident and serious gap in thinking – who is left to judge the cases our newly designed AI taskforce will soon exponentially create?

The fifth Climate Challenge brought together Cambridge students, representing a range of disciplines, to highlight possibilities of a greener future. The Climate Challenge is a training programme encouraging postgraduates and postdocs to submit early-stage proposals for scalable ideas that facilitate decarbonising transitions and address climate challenges. In collaboration with Cambridge Zero, Carbon13, the Maxwell Centre and a whole host of partner organisations, the E-Lab hosted the finalist pitches of the challenge on the 21^st of March 2025. First runners-up, Maureen Abel and Hauwa Busari reflect on their venture and experience developing a solution for water insecurity in this week’s blog.

The partnership between the King’s E-Lab and EFG International is grounded by a common belief in the need to challenge the status quo and reimagine the world – both to improve lives through innovation and to foster a future driven by bold, transformative ideas. When the E-Lab hosted Manuel Rybach and Melanie Beyeler in February 2025 for our annual EFG panel, our community was treated to a thoughtful reflection on the acute need to address challenges for sustainable finance and the variety of opportunities we must seize to foster collaborative innovation and build a more resilient global economy. While they were with us, the EFG team sat down with E-Lab Co-Founder Kamiar Mohaddes to discuss the purpose of the E-Lab, its inclusive approach to fostering innovation, and how the greatest ideas are born.

Recent events have seen the government of the United States embroiled in more than a few attention-grabbing headlines, with political commentators and academics alike pondering the consequences for future international relations. There is much confusion and a high level of uncertainty. In this week’s blog post, tech entrepreneur Matthew Wunderli shows what the United States, startups, and teenagers have in common and in what ways this comparison might help us prepare for what might come next.

In 2024, Maha Waseem was among the winners of the Homerton Changemakers Catalyst Fund with her cofounder Tamsin Dodsworth for their project Sustainakids. In this blog post, Maha details a key misperception in the pursuit of social impact – a focus on having the right answers rather than asking the right questions – and suggests the mindset social entrepreneurs should have as they seek to create meaningful change.

The formation of corporate partnerships is driving innovation, especially in the TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) industries. Over 80% of US CEOs are either implementing, or plan to incorporate partnerships to grow their businesses, or move into new markets, and maximise resources. A PwC survey from 2014, indicates that deals are 53% more likely to close when corporations join together in a partnership. Given the importance of these relationships, what do the experts say about how to establish and maintain partnerships that endure and create impact?

On Wednesday 22nd May, the King’s E-Lab hosted Pete Stavros, Co-Head of Global Private Equity at KKR, in conversation with King’s College Provost, Gillian Tett. As an investor, Stavros has helped lead several successful investments across sectors and sizes and has a pioneered an innovative employee engagement and ownership model. He is a firm believer in the power and benefit of employee ownership. Read his reflections on the model, a rare opportunity for a “win-win” in business, and the kind of leaders that can make it happen.

Ernst Bloch was a 20th century German philosopher whose magnum opus is a three-volumed ode to hope. While the worlds of start-ups and philosophical endeavor can seem to sit at odds with one another, a closer look at Blochian thinking shows what we stand to learn from bridging the two. What we do and how we do it should be infused with a particular kind of hope.

The Luxury industry is a highly influential sector owing to its immense cultural capital, global customer awareness and high visibility. Against a backdrop of rising socio-economic, gender and racial inequalities, however, luxury brand exclusivity may risk alienating large segments of society, thus creating social tensions which puts the industry under mounting pressure to become more inclusive. By working together, and with fashion social enterprises, strategies can be explored to reconcile luxury and inequality within a framework and set of partnerships that contributes to a fairer, more sustainable world.

In the past, aesthetics has featured primarily in philosophical study but, understanding the influence of aesthetics can be a powerful tool for entrepreneurs. As the business world becomes increasingly homogenised, it is imperative for a business to ‘differentiate’ itself. Creating a brand, however, is about more than just putting together different visual elements. We need to look closely at the meaning denoted by these elements and how this generates ‘coherence’. Why? Because when something is coherent, it becomes convincing.

On the face of it, poetry and entrepreneurship make for odd bedfellows, but traditional perceptions were challenged by the presentation on ‘Xu Zhimo - poetic innovator’ at the King’s E-Lab on 22 February, when the award-winning translator and King’s alumnus Stuart Lyons gave a slide presentation and poetry reading to an audience of 150 at the college’s Keynes Lecture Theatre. The message, underlined by the Provost Dr Gillian Tett OBE in her introduction, was that entrepreneurial thinking is not just the preserve of the hard disciplines of maths, science, economics and engineering.

On the 15th of February 2023, Malcolm McKenzie gave an address at a special Evensong, sung by the King’s Voices and hosted by the Dean of King's College, Cambridge. The address, ‘Religion and Enterprise’, explores what the Entrepreneur can learn from Religion and what the Religious can learn from Enterprise. Touching on these valuable lessons, it reflects on ethical issues for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship starts from seeing an opportunity that is not currently available to you because you do not ‘control’ sufficient resources. An entrepreneurial headteacher is one who works out how to get additional resources to achieve, for their pupils and families, more than is normally possible.

The theme of ‘entrepreneurship’ has the potential to inspire people working in different fields on innovative ideas. Mindsets hopes to provide a space to share a brief glimpse into the range of interesting individuals brought together by the Kings College Entrepreneurship Lab.