University Alliance is pleased to announce Innovating Future Business – an enterprise competition encouraging innovative, forward-thinking business ideas, open to students from Alliance universities.
What is Innovating Future Business 2017?
The competition is part of the Innovating Future Business festival at the University of Salford, taking place on Wednesday 10 May 2017 at MediaCityUK.
Budding entrepreneurs will have five minutes to pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges for a chance to win cash prizes from a prize pool of £5,000. Entrants must answer questions from the investors, university staff and other industry experts to secure their investment.
This year’s investors include: ANS Group; Cariocca Enterprises; Marketing Signals; Wakelet; and Web Applications UK. To read more about the investors click here.
The investors will be looking for a proposal for a business or start-up product or service that demonstrates a viable business with a low cost of entry, evidence of sound market research, and crucially, an innovative idea with the ‘wow’ factor.
This is a great opportunity for participants to gain real-life experience. All entrants will receive advice and feedback on their ideas. Watch students pitch for investment at last year’s Creative Entrepreneur event held by Salford Business School here, and read how the competition has helped previous winners Vinejuice.
Who can participate?
The competition is open to current students and alumni of Alliance universities, in all subject areas – entrants do not need to be studying a business-specific field but should have a good understanding of what is needed to launch their idea.
Entrants are encouraged to view their business idea as the ‘real thing’ and not a theoretical idea. The personality of the founder/co-founders is also an integral part of the final decision – this is something that will come through during the pitch. Find out about the entrants’ business ideas here.
Alliance universities participating in Innovating Future Business 2017 are:
Entrants will be pitching at the Digital Performance Lab at MediaCityUK in front of an audience. Register online to watch students pitch their business ideas to the panel investors on Wednesday 10 May 2017 at the University of Salford’s MediaCityUK campus. For more details on the event, visit the University of Salford’s website.
