Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh

Ní Dhulchaointigh was born in Kilkenny. She grew up on a farm and was constantly repairing broken items. She studied sculpture. At the age of 23 she moved to London to study product design at the Royal College of Art.[1] Here she came up with the idea of Sugru, a mouldable elastomer that can be used to repair broken items.[1] She combined bathroom sealant with wood-dust powder, which resulted in bouncy ball that looked like wood.[2] She graduated in 2004.[3] She partnered with James Carrigan and Roger Ashby to found the company FormFormForm in 2005.[1] She spent 8,000 hours in the lab developing the product, working with silicone scientists.[1] She demonstrated an early product at Electric Picnic.[4] She won a £35,000 grant from Nesta.[5] They ran out of funding in 2008, and used social media and crowdfunding to raise enough money to buy machinery, develop packaging and design a website.[3] They went on to secure £250,000 from Lacomp PLC in 2006.[6] The product eventually launched in December 2009 and sold out within 6 hours.[7] They were featured in Boing Boing and Wired.[3] She named Sugru after the Irish word súgradh, which means play.[7]

The joystick of an Xbox controller that has been fixed with Sugru

Sugru is sold in over 6,000 shops worldwide.[1] In 2010 Time magazine as one of the world's best inventions.[8] She delivered a Ted Talk at TEDxDublin in 2012.[9] Ní Dhulchaointigh was named as the Design Entrepreneur of the year by the London Design Festival in 2013.[10] She launched Sugru in B&Q shops across the UK and Ireland using a YouTube video to tell their customers about their product.[10][11]

By 2013, Sugru had been used on all seven continents.[5] They collaborated with Sugru user Joanne, who had no fingers on her left hand but wanted to take part in an ultra-marathon.[12][13] Ní Dhulchaointigh was selected by EY as one of their top entrepreneurs of the year.[14] She was invited to give a keynote at 99U at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Her keynote, The Magic Is in The Process, discussed the six-year process from hmmm to eureka and wow!.[15] They developed a foil handle for fencers with fencing equipment manufacturer Leon Paul. In 2014 Sugru was described by The Guardian as a wonder material.[2] FormFormForm were estimated to turn over £3.6 million a year in 2016.[16]

Ní Dhulchaointigh spoke at InspireFest in 2017, where she estimated that Sugru had been used to fix more than ten million items.[17][18] They launched a Family-Safe formula that allows children to get involved with making.[19] She won the 2018 European Inventor Award for Small and Medium Enterprises.[20][21] She is the first Irish person to win a European Inventor Award in the history of the prize.[4] The company sold to Tesa in 2018 for £7.6 million.[22] She is part of the Awesome Foundation, who donate £100 into a different idea every month.[3]