A YOUNG entrepreneur from Worcester has won a prestigious award organised by Innovate UK and The Prince’s Trust.
Andrew Reece, 26, has created WhiteBox, a tool for software developers that shows them how their code behaves, in real-time, as they write it, giving developers more opportunity to improve their work.
She has won a £5,000 grant, one-to-one business coaching and an allowance to cover living costs as part of The Young Innovators programme.
The scheme is organised by Innovate UK and The Prince’s Trust.
The Young Innovators Awards recognise young people from across the UK with great business ideas who have the potential to become successful entrepreneurs and future leaders in innovation.
This year there was an unprecedented number of applications – an 87 per cent increase on last time around.
Recent research shows over a third of 18 to 34-year-olds want to launch an independent enterprise in 2021, compared to 28 per cent of those aged 35 to 54.
The programme is set to continue rewarding young people from diverse backgrounds until at least 2023.
This year, 49 per cent of the winners were female; nearly a third were black, Asian or from an ethnic minority background and 17 per cent have a disability.
Andrew said: “Humans are bad at pretending to be computers, so even experienced programmers make many errors as they write code.
“Debugging these errors with existing tools is like trying to understand a spreadsheet where you can only see one row at a time.
“It is slow, expensive and reduces programmers’ quality of life.
“I am hoping to make WhiteBox an industry-standard tool and to encourage other companies to consider more possibilities in the human-factors design of their products.”
Emily Nott, head of equality, diversity and inclusion at Innovate UK said: “With 2020 proving to be an incredibly difficult year, maintaining our focus on Young Innovators was a priority for Innovate UK since finding the great entrepreneurial minds of the future is more important than ever.
“Working alongside this year’s winners, Innovate UK will help them grow and develop their business idea to make the world a better, and more innovative place. We can’t wait to see what they achieve this year.”
Ben Marson, Director of Partnerships at The Prince’s Trust said: “At The Prince’s Trust we know the enormous potential and entrepreneurial spirit of UK young people, even in times of considerable uncertainty.
“It is more important than ever that all young people, no matter their background, have the opportunity to thrive in work and turn their ideas into reality.
“Working with partners like Innovate UK allows us to encourage entrepreneurship among young people, and bring diverse ideas and businesses into the economy.”
Visit ktn-uk.org/programme/young-innovators/ for more on the scheme.
