Peter Farrell Cup winning team Pluvision takes 2nd place at Idea2Product Global in Sweden!

This blogpost courtesy of Niklas Olsson, UNSW exchange student from Sweden and founder of The Entrepreneurial Chase.

As a finalist in the Idea to Product® Global Competitions (I2P), Pluvision is a truly international team – members are from China, France, Korea and Sweden. Eric Wei, inventor of a new generation of eye drop technology, and Niklas Olsson represented Pluvision in the I2P Global Competition in Sweden. 

Held for the first time outside of Texas, I2P is a competition in the commercialization of innovation aiming to fill the gap between university research and business plan competitions. This year, 18 teams competed in three parallel championships: ICT, Energy and Life Science. 

As the first Australian finalist ever, Pluvision represented UNSW and the Brien Holden Vision Institute. It was with great excitement that we accepted our spot, something that turned around quickly as we were told that the airfare would have to be funded by ourselves. All other teams had won intensive pre-round competitions like I2P Africa or I2P Europe and had been funded by their respective universities. With only two weeks to final acceptance this called for a serious hat round.  

As the University unfortunately did not have such a trip in their budget, we raised the money ourselves. Cold calling soon created quite a long list of “No, I am sorry” and we realized that something different had to be done. By creating media buzz and awareness around this recognition of Australian innovation we managed to get the Brien Holden Vision Institute interested enough to sponsor the trip. Excited as ever, we went to represent the institute, UNSW and Australia in a final competitor field that spread across five continents and nine countries.  

I2P is about remarkable innovation and how it is to be commercialised. So those 10 slides of financials were not really useful, but instead we focused on what is most important in any business: What is the market pain you are solving and how are you doing that better than anyone else? Something that is unfortunately forgotten nowadays in the “back-of-the-credit-card” era of trying to find problems for ideas.  

Stepping out of the airport, trading 33 degree Australia for 3 degree Sweden, turned the system on, almost like boxers smelling ammonium before the big fight. Competition in the Life Science track included a nano-mesh product for surgery, an herb-based soap, a psychology-based make-up treatment and an effects indicator used at the early stages of drug development. Two had working prototypes, all but one multiple patents and one even had four PCTs filed. How on earth, in terms of feasibility, did we stand a chance? Well, we had two things that we were sure of: We knew the pain we were solving and we knew that we were doing so in a fundamentally different way.  

The competition was divided in two rounds, the first giving you feedback and the second being the final you were judged upon. The first pitch was, despite well-rehearsed, not spot-on and some major changes kept us up very late. The judges seemed pleased with the revamped version and did not even use up the full Q&A time. Either a very very good sign or a very very bad sign, our fingers were crossed for the former. Something that didn’t make us less nervous, what a fail to travel all the way and come back empty handed! 

"Second place to another innovation involving the human physical properties, more in the eye area … PLUVISION!”   http://www.ideatoproduct.org/global/

Inner joy and pride straightened our spines. As inaugural ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurs Week in Australia we had put Australian innovation on the global map. A big Thank You to Brien Holden Vision Institute, the CIE, friends and the entrepreneurial community who made us compete with such confidence. We are proud to be a part of something big growing in Australia, something creative and something exciting.


We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Peter Farrell Cup Finals Night recap

Pluvision, developer of a unique eye-wetting solution, took first place at this year’s Peter Farrell Cup Entrepreneurship Competition, held Wednesday 26 October on the UNSW Kensington campus.


Team Pluvision, from L to R: Hye Won Lee, Eric Wei, Noellie Garand,
Dr Wallace Bridge (lecturer), Niklas Olsson, Maurice Chiarello (lecturer)


In addition to going on to compete in the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge in December, the Pluvision team is heading to Sweden to compete in the I2P Idea2Product® competition in November.

“We’re really excited about getting selected as one of the top 15 finalists,” says student Niklas Olsson of Pluvision. “But I can’t believe we just won the Peter Farrell Cup. When I first started at UNSW I heard about the Cup but I never dreamed we’d win it!”

Of the 17 business plans submitted, eight were selected to present on the finals night. Each finalist is invited to present their enterprise to NewSouth Innovations Concept Development Meeting.

“It’s great to see students across campus identifying and tackling real-world problems. Their energy and passion was clear to see in the final pitches they delivered,” says Dr Steve Brodie of NewSouth Innovations. “I have no doubt that some of these students will go on to become successful entrepreneurs.”

Further commercialisation services are offered to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, and to the teams meriting Honourable Mention from the judges. 

RevoSen, developer of a myocardial ischaemic detection method, and Future Surgical Solutions, who have developed a novel bone-healing technology, won Honourable Mentions from the judging panel.

 

Judges, from L to R: Dr Kevin Cullen (NewSouth Innovations),
Anne-Marie Birkell (OneVentures), Peter Davison (Fishburners),
Simon Pinson (BSF), Bryce Summerell (Posse)

"It's clear to me there is no shortage of innovative research and enterprising individuals across a wide range of disciplines at UNSW,” says Peter Davison, one of the judges and a founder of co-working space and entrepreneur community Fisburners. “It’s tremendous to see students learning the basics of entrepreneurship within the university environment…the teamwork between postgraduates, undergraduates and academics to produce plausible business plans was a feature of the competition - innovative and promising in itself. I hope the University continues to make strides towards fostering student entrepreneurship."
This year’s competition featured a People’s Choice Award which was handily won by BioMark, who also placed 3rd overall.


BioMark team members, from L to R: Hayley Cullen, Arjanna Chitranjan,
Dr Wallace Bridge (lecturer), Timothy Couttas,
Maurice Chiarello (lecturer), Sasa Mitric.


Professor Greg Whitwell, Deputy Dean of Programs and Students at the Australian School of Business, remarked on the high levels of collaboration evident in presentations.

“And it’s collaboration of different sorts, between disciplines certainly, but also, remarkably, between undergraduate and postgraduate students, which is extremely rare,” he says. “I commend all the teams who made it to the finals and presented some really quality and high-level ideas.”

NMT (Novel Muscle Technologies), presented their business plan for an enterprise utilizing a unique synthetic gel that, when inserted into the body, can temporarily replace muscle tissue and provide a framework for new cells and muscle fibres to grow on.



Novel Muscle Technologies (NMT) team members, from L to R: Shruthi Hariharan,
Dr Wallace Bridge (lecturer), Scott Jamieson, Maurice Chiarello (lecturer), Anishka Tewari

Based on research done by Scott Jamieson, their business plan and presentation impressed the judges enough to award them second place, with remarks about the sophistication of both the idea and its development into a business. Judge Simon Pinson says,“It really is impressive what we’ve seen here this evening!”










We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Fear of failure vs failure to start (part 2)

My apologies on announcing the winners of last week's Peter Farrell Cup. Official press release or announcement coming soon. In the meanwhile, I couldn't help building on the earlier blog post about fear of failure vs failure to start. It was nagging me to create this bubble chart based on the same GEM data with a few changes:

• Fear of failure and entrepreneurial intentions in the same chart as different axes
• Bubble area according to additional population data (since the GEM data is based at the individual level, not firm level) 
• Color coded by GEM's classification (Factor-driven economy: RED, Efficiency-driven economy: BLUE, Innovation-driven economy: YELLOW)

So, if one were to draw a linear regression line through the whole data set, then Australia would probably be middle of the road for the overall data. If you look at only the yellow bubbles (innovation-driven economies), then Australia tends to be towards the upper right, i.e., greater intentions to start (not bad), but higher fear of failure (not good). Does that mean that relative to the other innovation-driven economies, Australia is a country of "intentrepreneurs" or "wantrepreneurs"?

Blog posts coming up:

• Winners of the Peter Farrell Cup
• UNSW vs Australia in graduate exit surveys: Who is creating jobs (not just filling them)?

Don't forget, tonight (Wed 2 Nov) is our semi-annual Meet the Entrepreneur event, co-sponsored by E&Y. This event's theme will be State of Play - What are the myths and realities about the VC industry in Australia, how does it compare to the rest of the world, and does the quality of entrepreneurship and innovation in Australia "stack up"?

We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.