Victoria Hamilton

I am a Teaching Associate within the Department of Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management, an Enterprise Fellow in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship and Founder & Director of VH Innovation Ltd. 

My business, VH Innovation Ltd, originated as a final year design project when I was a student at Strathclyde University. I originally developed our product, Recoil Kneepads, as part of my final year design project. I was inspired to help my dad, Gordon, who suffers from arthritis and painful joints, which he believes has been caused by his lifelong career as a joiner. After a dinner table conversation in 2012 where he complained of problems with his knees and existing knee pads, I came up with a redesign of the traditional kneepad which reduces pressure on the knee by up to 76%!

After securing funding through business start-up competitions in 2013 including, The nationwide Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards and the Scottish Governments Young Innovators Challenge run by The Scottish Institute for Enterprise, I began work on what became a 3-year development cycle before launching Recoil to the market in June 2016.

My most recent achievement was being awarded a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship in London to grow and scale the business internationally.

Following success with bringing my product to market, I have returned to Strathclyde to now also teach various design and entrepreneurship classes and share knowledge with other future entrepreneurs.

My areas of interest are:

• product development
• start-up business
• entrepreneurship
• entrepreneurial mindsets