Competition
The New Ventures Competition has launched!
What is it?
It is a tough and challenging competition for students and recent graduates at Scottish Colleges or Universities.
This competition is for people who are beyond the idea stage and are ready to go with their business or social enterprise.
New Ventures is also for people who have already launched their new business!
If you’ve made the decision to pursue your business idea, sleeves rolled up or already en route, New Ventures is fuel for your engine.
What kind of fuel? Oh, just a grand prize of £10,000! That kind of fuel! And yes, there are 2nd and 3d place prizes of £5,000 and £1,000 too.
The Facts:
Deadline for entry: 24 January 2014
Successful entrants will attend StartUp Day: 8 February 2014
Prizes: £10,000, £5,000 and £1,000
Apply by visiting: www.sie.ac.uk/about-sie/sie-activities/new-ventures.aspx and downloading the entry form
It is for YOU and your well-developed business plan and we are open for entries now!
Please take a look at the full eligibility information & guidelines here
Previous winners have gone on to secure further funding (including from Dragons Den) and have continued to run their businesses after graduation. Like Amy Jack (pictured below), our overall winner from last year!
SIE CEO Fiona Godsman and the last New Ventures competition overall winner, Amy Jack. Receiving her big cheque!
Good Luck, and get your motor running!
Fresh Ideas competition 2013-2014 is Open!
Hi Friends, here at Scottish Institute for Enterprise our popular New Ideas competition has returned for 2013-2014 as Fresh Ideas and is GO for launch!
Fresh Ideas is perfect for you IF:
- If you don’t know know a lot about business (Newbies welcome!)
- If your idea is early–stage
- If you are studying in Scotland or recently graduated
- If you want to increase your business know-how and gain useful skills
- If you want to win £100 (regional) or £500 (national) or both!
Aye that’s right, you know I’m talking about you 😉
Fresh ideas is run first by each Scottish Institution with local prizes, with finalists proceeding to the national competition. Finalists will have the opportunity to attend our Start-Up Day in February, a day dedicated to helping you develop your idea, enhancing your skills and build new relationships.
Visit SIE at http://www.sie.ac.uk/about-sie/sie-activities/fresh-ideas.aspx for full competition info and application details.
Our new online application system will allow you to save your progress as you go. That means you can: Get an idea jolt (The good kind). Take some time to ponder (possibly in a chair while stroking your chin?). Come back to your application. Progress! Repeat until complete. Deadline for Entry: November 29th 2013.
Have Questions? Get in Touch!
You can always find me on twitter at @SIE_OU and on Facebook at our SIE Open University Scotland Group where you’ll find info on regional and social events, competitions and whatever fun things the internet brings me.
Best of luck x
SIE – Where are we now?
Hi Friends, The Scottish Institute for Enterprise is back for the new academic year! This is what has been going on…
The Young Innovators Challenge (YIC 2013) wrapped up
Winners of The YIC 2013: David Townsend, Victoria Hamilton, Michael Yiin Shih Jie, and Blair Bowman. Winner Laura Jayne Nevin was unable to attend.
Five young entrepreneurs were awarded £50,000 each, plus one year of business support for their ideas. From the press release: “Blair Bowman (Aberdeen University), David Townsend (St Andrews University), Laura Jayne Nevin (Edinburgh College of Art), Michael Yiin Shih Jie (Edinburgh University) and Victoria Hamilton (Strathclyde University) impressed the judges with their business plans during a tense process to claim the £50,000 and one year of dedicated business support to turn their ideas into reality.”
Here are some of the highlights from the competition!
And the winners made the papers
So then all of us at Scottish Institute for Enterprise got together… And said hello to some new faces!
I’m on the left, easily identifiable by my jumping at the wrong time!
These are my fellow interns, they are students at different Colleges and Universities across Scotland. There they will be communicating and interacting with their fellow students to promote enterprise and entrepreneurship!
What is coming up?
SIE competitions including Fresh Ideas and New Ventures
New Ventures has a top prize of £10,000 and is for students with an existing business idea that is ready to go!
Fresh Ideas will award five winners £500 each and is designed to help you learn how to develop an idea!
Regional events and competitions just for you
Well, as an Open University student study is decentralised, a fancy way to say we work remotely and aren’t campus based. We have classes that begin in both October and February, so some students (like me) have had classes throughout the summer and are just about to sit an exam ( …yay). This has the benefit of making education accessible regardless of where you are in Scotland, but it also means we don’t get to say hello face to face so often. With students all over Scotland it would be nice to have some fun activities near home, right?
So with that in mind, this year we’ll have much more regional activities and events that Open University students can take part in!
I’ll be promoting those for you here, on our Facebook group and on twitter at @SIE_OU
And of course we’ll also be running competitions with fun prizes you can win!
Keeping in touch is easy
You can visit The Scottish Institute for Enterprise at www.sie.ac.uk any time for all the information you can handle
Join our Facebook group for Open University students where I’ll be posting regularly with news, stories, ideas and updates
Follow me on twitter at @SIE_OU
And please check back here on Enterprise Everywhere where I’ll be posting events and competitions as well as Enterprise news from home and abroad!
Your Upgraded Lunch – Competition Winner!
I said I’d create a wordcloud of the responses I received, and boy did you deliver – You all had such terrific responses.
Here is what we learned:
Everyone loves cheese, mayonnaise, salad and bread. A lot of you like chocolate, bacon, butter and champagne. Steak, chicken and honey mustard are also big winners. That is great taste in lunch right there.
We received entries via comments on the post, by email and also from twitter, and after sticking them all into a proverbial hat (AKA random number generator) the winner was… Foz!
Congratulations Foz, you’ll receive a Black & Blum Box and Bag and a gift voucher from Real Foods to enjoy your cheesy pasta bake with!
Thank you very much for participating, you’re all so great 🙂
*(Wordcloud generated via www.JasonDavies.com/wordcloud)
Upgrade your Lunch – Competition!
Hi Friends, It’s time for another competition!
How we eat, what, when, where and with whom all say a lot about who we are.
For a lot of people lunch is:
- Eaten at lightning speed. Like not-chewing wins an award.
- Eaten at our desks, in our cars, on trains, on the bus.
- OR maybe not eaten at all. Lunch might just be a coffee.
The Young Innovators Challenge has a Food & Drink category. You can read about it here! So with that in mind, can we try to bring a little bit more satisfaction to our midday meal? Would it help if lunch was a more pleasant experience?
Then how about you UPGRADE your lunch by winning this prize!
Black & Blum’s Box Appetit and Black & Blum Box Appetit Lunch bag
The box lid has a dipping pot, there are removable sections for separate items, and it is easy to transport and clean. The lunch bag does double duty. Carry your lunch in it, then unfold it to reveal a checkered table cloth! It makes lunch easy wherever you go. It’s also very stylish.
I came across this while visiting the Librairie Filigranes bookstore in Brussels and it was a great find.
To get you started, your new lunch kit comes with £20 to spend at Real Foods
Real Foods have online shopping & UK-wide delivery as well as two stores in Edinburgh. They have fairtrade, organic and vegetarian products including many locally sourced goods, so you are guaranteed to find something you enjoy.
To Enter: Tell me what is your DREAM lunch? If you could have anything at all, what would it be? Thai Green Curry? Neeps & Tatties? Sushi? Mac & Cheese? Jelly Beans?
Send me your answer by:
- Tweeting your response to @SIE_OU
- Commenting on this post
- OR send me an email at OU.intern@Sie.ac.uk
You’ve got until April 30th to get your answers in!
Be honest! Don’t say “broccoli” if what you really want is to liquify krispy kreme donuts and and hook them up to an IV.*
I’ll use the responses I get to make a wordcloud 🙂 Bon appétit!
*Not that I’ve given any thought to THAT, of course not. I love broccoli.
Book Giveaway Winner!
Hi friends,
Quick note to say thanks very much to everyone that entered the bundle of books giveaway!
Congratulations to winner Mark R. Your copies of Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, Dear Entrepreneur and The $100 Startup are all on their way.
Happy Reading!
Book giveaway!
Hi Friends,
SO coursework is still months or weeks away from being over, there is no sign of Spring yet that doesn’t immediately turn into a sign of Winter, and despite it being Easter those woolen coats and hats are still in regular use.
BUT that is no bad thing, it gives you a perfect excuse to get comfortable in a chair with a book and a big mug of tea. What better day for a book? There is no better day! I’ve got a bundle of three encouraging books to giveaway:
The $100 Startup features stories and case studies from a world-traveling entrepreneur (He’s now visited EVERY country on earth). Drive shares the secrets of motivation discovered by four decades of research, use it to your advantage. Dear Entrepreneur is a collection of frank and honest letters from founders that are building and growing as we speak, including Innocent and Sugru.
ENTRY is easy, just send me an email to OU.Intern@sie.ac.uk or leave me a comment to win the bundle! Enter by 5 April 2013.
What type of business would I start? Competition winners!
Hi Friends!
Last month I started a little competition asking people to send me their answer to the question:
“If I could start ANY type of business, what type of business would that be?”
Well I asked and some people were courteous enough to answer (Thanks everyone!) There were some great entries, but the winner was:
“If I could start up any business I would open a children’s innovation centre, for them to design and create products and be encouraged to reach out for their dreams” C.Moffat
Great! Maybe it would be something like a hacker-space for children? Not just somewhere with paint by numbers and someone telling you how to proceed, but a place to play where imagination is number one and children develop problem solving skills AND confidence.
They could have supervision and assistance to allow them to use materials and equipment they would not otherwise have access to – Maybe they could also have classes or sessions by qualified people? Or they could design things to be made with 3D printers and then qualified adults could print them?
Problem-solving is an enormous skill, one that can be developed, and a generation of children growing up empowered to look for solutions in their own new ways would be a benefit to the whole country. What a great idea! So why not bring this idea into reality?
And winning for the most out-there idea:
“hourly rentable, safe, padded sound proofed cells for those ‘aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh!!!!!’ moments in life. Kids, relationships, work and TMA writing” J.Heeley.
We could certainly all use one of those every now and then – Or now…and NOW when it comes to TMA writing 🙂
Competition Time!
Now that the Spring weather is on the way (It is I tell you!) it is time to shake out the cobwebs and breathe in some fresh air. I can think of no better way to do that then by getting your brains pumping with imagination and winning a prize at the same time!
Send me your answer to the following question and you could win £20 of book tokens to spend at a UK bookstore of your choice!
If I could start ANY type of business, what type of business would that be?
Email your answer to OU.Intern@sie.ac.uk
Sky is the limit here friends, if you could just go for it without fear, what would you go for? A second little prize will also be given for silliest response!
You’ve got until March 6th to enter, so get your thinking cap on!
Please follow me on twitter at @SIE_OU and check out our Facebook group SIE Open University Scotland for more information, news and competitions.
Enterprise goes Everywhere 