Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford (SVCO) has become one of the highlights of Saïd Business School's year.
For the last 11 years, Oxford has brought prominent members of the Silicon Valley community to the UK to explore the opportunities and challenges of building technology sector businesses. The purpose of this “Think Tank” is to create and share actionable insight on how to start, scale and run great technology companies. To date more than 100 leading entrepreneurs, innovators and investors have contributed to this programme.
SVCO is the annual meeting of the “Think Tank” and is held in mid-November each year. This event is a working meeting not a conference. At its heart are small scale, high-impact sessions where participants share their hard-won, practical insight with the next generation of entrepreneurs and work together to explore new ideas and make things happen. Participants return each year because they care passionately about the purpose and outcomes of the programme.
SVCO is Oxford’s flagship event on entrepreneurship and innovation and is an integral part of the University of Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Email marketing.events@sbs.ox.ac.uk to express your interest in taking part in SVCO 2013, 24-25th November 2013.
What Happens at SVCO?
Masterclasses - The core of each year's forum, Masterclasses are highly interactive, informal sessions focusing on the challenges of starting and growing technology businesses.
Plenary Sessions - Two Plenary Sessions provide an opportunity to hear from prominent entrepreneurs, innovators and investors discuss and debate key issues in entrepreneurship and innovation. Watch the Plenary Sessions videos on YouTube >
SVCO 20:20 - At the new 20:20 sessions, experts share their insights into the latest developments in their field in a series of 20 minute talks.
1-1 Mentoring - Run in conjunction with the School's Careers Centre, selected Saïd Business School students get the opportunity to meet with four of the event speakers to ask key questions to enable them to launch their new business or get the job they want with an early stage company.
SVCO-Oxford Union Debate - An opportunity for all delegates to debate a key motion in the chamber of the Oxford Union, the world's most prestigious debating society. Watch the Oxford Union Debate video on YouTube >
Update on SVCO 2012
Special Theme: Big Data
SVCO 2012 took place at 18-19th November and, in addition to the core focus on what it takes to start, scale and run great technology companies, focused on the opportunities and challenges of Big Data. As ever, we were delighted to be joined at the event by pioneers from leading organisations including Aristotle, Factual, IBM, the McKinsey Global Institute, Meltwater Group, Quid, Splunk, SQLStream and Tata Consultancy Services. A full list of speakers and their sessions and masterclasses can be found here: http://svco.sbs.ox.ac.uk/speakers.
For the first time, to open up the event to a wider group of people, SVCO 2012 included a new “main stage” track – SVCO 20:20. This new track combined high-impact 20-minute talks from participants, Oxford faculty and other guest speakers with opportunities for networking and discussion. Following this year's theme, the participants then worked in small teams to develop ideas for new Big Data enabled ventures in healthcare, energy, retail and new media.
The first day of the event concluded with the lively SVCO-Oxford Union Debate at Oxford Union discussing the motion: "This House believes that corporations are capable of safeguarding against the risks of Big Data", followed by dinner and drinks. Proposition was led by Patrick Chung (NEA), Andrew McCollum (New Enterprise Associates), John Phillips (Aristotle International) and Lieutenant General Jeffrey Talley (United States Army Reserve). The opposition was led by Maria Sendra (Jones Day), Damian Black (SQLStream Inc), Salim Ismail (Singularity University) and Jessica Richman (Saïd Business School).
On day two, following welcomes from Peter Tufano, Peter Moores Dean at Saïd Business School, the Plenary Sessions covered topics such as 'Starting and Scaling Facebook' with Andrew McCollum (Co-founder of Facebook) and Jonathan Helliger (former VP of Technical Operations, Facebook), and 'Unlocking Data, Unlocking Growth' with Tyler Bell (Director of Product, Factual) and Michael Chui (McKinsey Global Institute).
Delegates then joined in their choice of 28 Masterclasses led by our guest speakers on a wide range of Big Data and entrepreneurship topics such as, 'You, The Next Big Thing', 'Scaling Up in Europe: 5 Rules to the Modern Marketing Model' and 'From Machine Data to Operational Intelligence & Beyond: Splunking Big Data' .
Links to download the full programme and agenda can be found below.
SVCO 2012 In The Press
The Wall Street Journal covers SVCO:Laura Cracknell
Oxford University's Oxford Today website profiles former student and SVCO 2012 speaker, Bob Goodson, who quit his MPhil in Medieval Literature to be part of the information revolution after attending SVCO 2003:Big Data and Oxford >
Contacts
General Enquiries:
email: eventsmanager@sbs.ox.ac.uk
Media enquiries: Press Office
Clare Fisher: clare.fisher@sbs.ox.ac.uk
tel: + 44 (0) 1865 288968/Mobile: + 44 (0)7912 771090
