The area of activity does not matter, it is not even necessary for the business idea to be very in-depth, as long as it is innovative. The Universidade do Algarve CRIA's 2016 Caixa em Caixa competition challenges people from the Algarve to put their entrepreneurial dreams on paper, to, who knows, take the first step towards a successful future business.
The phase of submitting proposals for the 5th edition of this competition by CRIA – Division of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer of the University of Algarve has already started and will run until the 3rd of March.
This is the first phase of a process that also foresees a period for the maturation of a first batch of selected ideas and will end with the awarding of prizes to 30 of the proposals presented in the first phase. To give you an idea, in the last edition of the competition, «161 business ideas» were presented.
Anyone wishing to submit an idea to the competition must fill in the “Summary Proposal” form, available on the CRIA website, and send it to [email protected] , together with the CVs of each participant.
“In this first phase, you go through a very, very basic application form, which asks for some information about the promoters and about the project. The idea is to facilitate and give people great freedom to present any business idea they have thought of, any project they have in mind, so that they can then be evaluated and worked on with the University of Algarve team», described the director of BUILD Hugo Barros to Sul Informação and to Rádio Universitária do Algarve Rua FM (102,7 FM), as guest of the radio program Impressions.
This simplicity of access to the competition is intended to open up the range of recruiting ideas as much as possible and give space to people to "give a chance to their imagination and their entrepreneurship". "We will hold dissemination sessions with research centers, the academic community, municipalities and professional schools, in order to have the ability to reach the target audience, wherever they are, identifying good business ideas that are innovative", illustrated.
Here are the calls business labs, where the promoters of the ideas that are selected, after the first phase, can mature their project. “Here, selected participants attend seminars and workshops on entrepreneurship, business creation and management, among other topics. The aim is to give promoters tools to find out more about their business, about what the incorporation of a company is,” he said.
After this process, the final projects are chosen by a jury composed of the different partners of CRIA in promoting this competition.
This model has been perfected over the years and the balance of the event organizers is positive. “Year after year, the number of applications has been greater. (…) In the end, what matters is not only having good business ideas, but also that companies are born. After several editions, we are pleased to see that many of these companies continue to work and innovate», said Hugo Barros.
Not least because one of Ideias em Caixa's objectives is “to help promote employability and innovation in the territory”.
«We are already in the 5th edition of the competition and we think that this is something that has been experiencing very interesting growth, in terms of the work model, the partnerships that have been created and the outputs of companies and, most importantly, of the success of these companies after the competition», added the director of CRIA, who was accompanied, in the interview with Impressions, by the winners of the last Ideias em Caixa, the young Maurício Namora and Márcia Santos, da startup mirabilis.
Ideias em Caixa is developed in partnership with the Business Association of the Algarve Region (NERA), the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs (ANJE), Caixa Geral de Depósitos and the Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (IAPMEI).
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