Announcing ... the GIG Engine

Announcing .. the GIG Engine
http://www.asb.unsw.edu.au/research/centreforinnovationandentrepreneurship/resources/Pages/gigengine.aspx (built by CIE and NSi in collaboration with BlueChilli and additional assistance from NICTA and Silicon Beach) 

This interactive visual map of the Australian innovation system builds on a long history of TechMaps. The GIG Engine is also timely for incumbents and newcomers to our community to familiarize themselves with who is out there, doing what, and how interconnected this space is.

Back in Vancouver, I was part of the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST), which was the driving force behind the BC TechMap, published as a massive poster in 2003:

Apparently, there's a 2012 version coming soon!

In 2011, Env & Planning A published a similar TechMap for Puget Sound (Seattle area) came out, too. 

The BC TechMap was lauded for making people feel like they’re part of a community, and the map remained in the boardrooms of many offices several years after it was created.

However, these Techmaps have a few limitations: (i) they’re static and get dated quickly, (ii) they’re hard to navigate, (iii) they focus on the tech-preneurs, and are missing all the glue that holds these pieces together. The first two are obvious, but let’s have a look at point iii. If you redraw the BC TechMap as a social network diagram, you’ll see that it actually looks like the clusters of multiple generations spin-offs are totally disconnected:

If you’re an entrepreneur, that doesn’t exactly tell you anything other than that some companies and universities spin off more companies, but it doesn’t say who to turn to for R&D tax advice, capital, workshops, legal help, tech support, market research, etc. .. Enter GIG Engine.

Just in the last few years, our community has seen the (re-)emergence of supporting organizations (in no particular order): Sydney Angels, Tech23, SydStart, MEGA (reborn), StartMate, PushStart, IgnitionLabs, Springboard, Founders Institute, General Assembly, MHCarnegie, Accel, StartupBus, Fishburners, 66-Meetups, BlueChilli, Heads OverHeels, UnConvention, TiE, Student entrepreneurship societies (e.g. UNSW, UTS) and other facebook groups, more courses and programs at unis and pre-uni (incl social entrepreneurship), ShoeString Startups, and a number of hack-a-thons (RHoK, Launch48). We have also seen recent attempts to map out the ecosystem via Silicon Beach (mindmeister) and our partners (StartRail, ANZ Cleantech Industry 2010), as well as attempts to sequence the Aussie innovation Genome, these maps still fall a little short on some of the same 3 points mentioned earlier. I’m not saying the GIG Engine is perfect, and we're hoping the community will get involved (email us!) to make it better.

What you could get out of it: Find out who’s who, and who’s related to who, to help you build the network you need for your venture.

What we get out of it: A living database that can be used for research on the networks of ventures.

(But really did it because it we were curious and it was kind of fun.)

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We wish to acknowledge the CIE's sponsors and express our appreciation of their support. 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 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.

Announcing the Peter Farrell Cup competition FINALISTS!!

 After a (ahem) slight delay, we are pleased to announced the finalists in the Peter Farrell Cup Entrepreneurship Competition. 

Of the 17 entrants, EVERY team was picked by at least one judge as a being worthy of further interest.  However, the following eight had the highest and most scores, earning them the right to pitch LIVE to the judging team.

These eight teams will be presenting their ideas and enterprises to our five judges on Wednesday evening, 26 October, in the Ritchie Theatre (Scientia Bldg) on the UNSW Kensington campus, beginning at 6 PM.

Come along to hear the newest and best of UNSW innovation and entrepreneurship!  (If you haven't already done so, please register here so we can get the catering numbers right.)

Abracadaver
BetaMed
Biomark
Future Surgical Solutions
Munchable
NMT
Pluvision
RevoSen

Many thanks to our judges for their hard work in reading, evaluating and scoring the business plans.  We look forward to your assessment and feedback on the live pitches!

Bryce Summerell - CEO at The Entourage, founder of DateRate.com.au, founder at Meet Bryce, and president at ACESUTS
Anne-Marie Birkell - General Partner in OneVentures and non-executive director for RedFlow Technologies Ltd
Simon Pinson – co-founder of BSF Group
Kevin Cullen - CEO NewSouth Innovations Pty Limited
Paul Levins - President Australia and New Zealand, Intellectual Ventures
Peter Davison - founder, Fishburners

For more information, please don't hesitate to contact the CIE (cie@unsw.edu.au)

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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.

CIE's social media feeds

As mentioned in a recent blog post, we have updated our social media feeds. The aggregated RSS feed (incl twitter, blog, constant contact and google calendar) is now also available via facebook. That means you can follow us using any (combination) of the following:

• @cieunsw (headlines)
• https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=cie@unsw.edu.au (events)
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/all_cie_unsw?format=xml (RSS feed of headlines and events)
• http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=all_cie_unsw (daily email digest of headlines and events, sent ~noon)
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Innovation-Entrepreneurship/187722841299461 (our RSS feed in facebook)

We had a LinkedIn group, but the interface was clunky, so we shut it down in favor of maintaining the above.

.. And, yes, we will still be sending out invitations to CIE events and newletters via our Constant Contact email list. Subscribe here

Too busy to tell you about what we're busy with

Oh, the irony. We are so busy organizing and coordinating events, that we're too busy to stop for a minute, invite the larger community to upcoming events or draft summaries and press releases about what just happened. by and large our online communication falls into 4 categories:

• Events sponsored by the CIE (handled using constant contact & our email lists)
• News of CIE related initiatives (handled using this blog)
• Events by associated organizations (handled using google calendar)
• News from associated organizations (handled by twitter) 

Each of these channels produces it's own RSS feed, each of which can by 'burned' to daily email digests using Google's feedburner too.

For the last couple months, we have been providing the links to these tools separately (i.e. follow us on twitter, but not google calendar or constant contact; or follow the blog, but not the other channels).

This is just plain confusing. As a result, we aggregated the four RSS feeds into one (using google reader), and burned it to a daily email digest (using feedburner).

To receive an individual RSS update of everything that we (re-)broadcast, please use this link:

•  http://feeds.feedburner.com/all_cie_unsw?format=xml

To receive a daily digest email between 1200-1300 of everything that we (re-)broadcast, please use this link:

•  http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=all_cie_unsw

(If you are on our constant contact email list you will continue to receive personal invitations for events sponsored by the CIE)

Here is a screenshot example of one of our recent daily email digests:

CIE Newsletter (Spring 2010 edition)

In this issue: :: Entrepreneur's Notebook :: Entrepreneurial Internship Program :: Entrepreneurs' Confidence Barometer :: Diploma in Innovation Management :: Upcoming Events   Welcome to CIE's emergence into the web2 era of communication! In addition to an updated homepage, we now have a more automatic way of subscribing to more frequent updates about news and events: Events: For real-time updates on new event announcements, please subscribe to the "events@cie" RSS feed or email service.  News: For real-time updates on all news, please subscribe to the "news@cie" RSS feed or email service. Since last April, the CIE has continued many of the existing programs with increasing momentum, and pursuing several new programs too. We also have a new Program Manager, Linda Glave, to help with the daily operations so Martin can dedicate a little more time to teaching and researching innovation and entrepreneurship in Australia.

Entrepreneur's Notebook Networks & Networking - Don't waste your time; invest it! by Dr Martin J Bliemel   Networks and networking are pretty hot topics these days. When exploring a new line of business, product, or market, networking is often a quick way to get rich feedback. I ran my own business consulting firm for a couple years, searched for clients and partners, and recently completed my PhD dissertation on the networks of entrepreneurs, so I feel the need to disseminate some of my observations. Setting aside my rant about the differences between networks, social networks, and online social networks, this column reviews two key things to consider before networking: ·   Is this the right network for me? ·   How should I use the opportunity to network? Which network is the right one? Networks (and organizations that facilitate networking events; example) range along a variety of variables. Some are more durable, and others more trendy. Some are more like a market, and others more like a clique. If you are prospecting for customers, why would you spend your time at an industry conference among all your competitors? If your business is relationships based, why would you network at conferences instead of pursuing individual referrals from your existing network? If you are looking to increase sales and want to 'spread the word', then yes, a shotgun approach to networking might be the best one. That might be by handing out more business cards than Darcy Rezac, through to blasting the news out there with all the new social media platforms. However, if you are looking for that needle in the haystack, and can clearly describe that needle to others, a more targeted search is more applicable. With a more targeted approach, you should approach specific people (for specific referrals). Social media platforms can still help, but work better if you prequalify who you contact, and address them directly. Just think of the last time you felt personally compelled to reply back to a "Dear Subscriber" message (ironic that this column should start that way, I know);, asking for something specific, other than selling you a product or service. Learn to think twice about which networking events to go to, and how to leverage them to your advantage (my second point, below). How to network For beginners, networking feels awkward at first, but can quickly become second nature. The basics include (i) having a business card, (ii) offering it somewhere toward the middle or end of your elevator pitch so it doesn't appear like you're liberally giving cards away, (iii) handing it over in a way that can be read easily (e.g. with two hands, card face up and oriented the right way), and (iv) respectfully reading the other person's card. The point I would like to emphasize here though is the elevator pitch. In particular I often see two areas in which networkers fall short of their potential: explicitly stating what value they provide, and what they are looking for. Regarding the value proposition, in addition to clearly stating your name, role, and who you work for, never assume people are familiar with the company or can extrapolate what services the company provides. Don't leave them guessing, and provide a simple, concise example of who a typical (or ideal) client looks like, and how you improve their business/life. A personal story of the impact you have on their business/life is way better than numbing statistics of how many products you sell and how many customers you have. Regarding what you are looking for, everyone is obviously looking for opportunities. Opportunities are ubiquitous, idiosyncratic and ambiguous. The first implication of your networking is that you are looking to drum up business. If however, you have other needs, it is perfectly ok to admit you are growing your business and looking for help. People have a natural tendency to help, IF they know they can and it does not come at a major cost to them. For example, after your elevator pitch, you might invite the other person to assist you in finding a better recruiting agency, or providing you a direct referral to a potential employee. Don't overwhelm them and ask for them to help you with all aspects of your business, just show a little humility and ask for ideas relating to a currently important or urgent issue you are dealing with. You may not get what you ask for, but you also don't get what you don't ask for. 3rd Year for the Entrepreneurial Internship Program   The Meet-and-Match event for CIE's Entrepreneurial Internship Program was our biggest ever!  A "short"-list of 30 Honour's and Dean's List students competed for 12 spots with our industry partners.  But then, the partner companies were so blown away with the quality of students that 5 additional positions were created and offered on the spot! This year's partners are: Anittel Atlassian BMDI Healthcare Homestar Finance IPScape NICTA Pet Barn ResMed Telcoinabox Our congratulations to the students and to our partners for their efforts, and we can't wait to see the reports and posters at the March Wrap-Up event!  Entrepreneurs' Confidence Barometer  Entrepreneurs lead the way back to growth   A recent survey of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year alumni has found that 74% of respondents defied the market and grew their businesses in 2009, with 60% expecting to achieve double digit growth in calendar 2010. The Ernst & Young survey found that the respondents - some of Australia's most successful entrepreneurs - are increasingly confident about their business growth prospects, with 72% confident about the Australian economy in 2010 and 67% believing the availability of capital will improve in 2011. Seventy one percent expect to employ more people in the next 12 months, 62% plan to raise funds in the next 12 months and 68% plan to expand operations overseas. In addition, the entrepreneurs surveyed overwhelmingly agreed that passion, determination and vision are the key ingredients for success, with 80% believing that this has not changed in the past 10 years and will not change in the future. The survey respondents had started on average four businesses each, creating their first business at the average age of 25 and were motivated primarily by the desire to create a business, with wealth creation as a secondary driver. These are a few of the many findings contained in the 2010 Entrepreneurs' Confidence Barometer, a survey conducted to mark the 10th anniversary of the Entrepreneur Of The Year program in Australia. Ernst & Young partner Greg Logue says the responses illustrate that successful entrepreneurs are more than simply higher achievers. "They are the ones who seek out opportunities and turn their vision into reality, creating a flow-on success for those around them through employment, export growth and social contributions," says Logue. "The confidence and focus of these entrepreneurs is both inspiring and heartening - these are the people who continue to drive the economy forward and create the future." The survey findings also suggest that there is a greater appreciation of the contribution entrepreneurs make to our economy and communities. Fifty six percent of respondents believe the Australian culture supports entrepreneurship - a significant shift in attitude compared to a similar 2004 survey that found that only 38% of respondents held the same view. Diploma in Innovation Management  Now open to ALL UNSW undergraduate students!   The Diploma in Innovation Management has been successfully migrated from the Faculty of Science to the Australian School of Business. The Diploma is a unique undergraduate offering that is open to students of any Faculty, AND is taught by academics from various faculties, further supplemented by presentations and lectures from industry experts and government officials. Course material covers areas such as creativity in enterprises, business principles, business planning for new ventures, funding, management and commercialisation of intellectual property, and valuation and assessment of innovative businesses. Students engage in exercises to set up and run their own new ventures and participate in case studies with Australian and international entrepreneurs. The lectures, workshops, case studies and tutorials in each of the program's courses are delivered by a well-balanced mixture of university academics and expert industry and government professionals. Upcoming Events Meet the Entrepreneur: Ernst & Young   When:    Thursday 23 September Meet the Entrepreneur is a semi-annual event; this session's topic is CleanTech, and will be moderated by Dr Marc Newson, Partner Oceania Cleantech Leader, Ernst & Young. Click here to register by Thursday, 16 September Peter Farrell Cup - NEW website!! www.pfcup.com.au  The Peter Farrell Cup provides students with the opportunity to bring their innovative business idea to life by pitching to a panel of experts from the Sydney entrepreneurial community.  The competition is open to teams containing at least one currently-enrolled UNSW student.  Teams submit a business plan and finalists are selected to pitch their ideas live to the judging panel. Want to team up with a student to help you represent in the competition? Meet-Mix-Match Event - Tues 21 Sept Click here for details. Entrepreneur of the Year Award Join us to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year program in Australia!  This is the world's most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs and celebrates building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognising them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 135 cities in 50 countries.  Over the last decade, Ernst & Young has recognised the achievements of over 800 extraordinary business leaders in this country. Click here for details.

Sponsors We are currently seeking sponsors for Diploma Scholarships, internship opportunities, and the Peter Farrell Cup. If you are interested in being associated with these innovative initiatives in our newsletters, press releases, website, and at the event, please contact us. Sponsorship may be in the form of general sponsorship for the event (cash or in-kind), or by sponsoring a student intern at your organization. We are pleased to confirm AusIndustry, Ernst & Young, NewSouth Innovations and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE.  Likewise, we would like to thank Peter Farrell and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. Their continued support helps provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, our sponsors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. If your firm is keen to engage with UNSW students, faculty and alumni, and our members from industry, please contact us.

CrisisCamp Syd a huge success. Thanks volunteers!

Reposting from http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Sydney/meetings/04-Sept-2010#Summary

The organizers of CrisisCamp Sydney exceeded their expectations and objectives for the geocoding and crowdsourcing event planned for the weekend despite a rainy start on Saturday. Fifteen volunteers joined the first day and nine showed up on Sunday. We were lucky to have very talented, hardworking and committed volunteers. Here's a wrap up of what happened.

Originally, we were hoping to group the number of volunteers depending on their skill sets. In every group, we planned on putting a developer or two, a researcher and one or two members with Pakistani language proficiency. But as everyone got more settled with geocoding, a number of our developer experts were able to improve on the work flow specifically in making the geocoding less laborious. In just a few hours, they were able to reconfigure how to make the workload more efficient.

Paul helped us in designing a more efficient work flow by creating GIS layers which added context to the mashup application. From this, Luke wrote a script that summarized village data on the OSM. Meanwhile, we had our other volunteers, Adam, Fadhillah, Umair, Eva, Joel, Warren, Rene and Ping continue to do geocoding and crowdsourcing (using Crowdflower). Another volunteer, Lachlan, was tasked with helping automate some of the tasks needed to be performed on Crowdflower. These allowed the tasks to be automated and made it easier for our geocoding and crowdsourcing volunteers. He did this using a grease monkey script. One Pakistani volunteer, Anita, was also connected with Anihi at CrisisCommons to help with translating in Urdu a wiki page.

Another important task completed was when Pamela, Hassan and Ivan, using a JavaScript/Mashup, created an application whereby the villages that had been geocoded were in bold and this information was then matched against the spreadsheet of flood affected villages found a http://bit.ly/pkflood_kp.

As the first day rolled along, our volunteer videographer, Tolmie shot and produced a tutorial video on geocoding villages using OSM and US DMA data. After editing, he uploaded it on Youtube and the CrisisCommons wiki. It will also be uploaded in the Drumbeat site.

On both days, Aram, wrote an application using Django that pulled out of Crowdflower messages based on their urgency, prioritizing these messages to be processed by crowdsourcing volunteers.

All in all, our team had processed over 200 SMS messages in Crowdflower. We added about 300 or so villages on the Open Street Maps.

Our student partners, Khiem and Sandy have done a great job in helping us secure the venue, helped with the catering and the other logistical details that needed to be attended to for the two day event. Martin has shown his support, sponsorship and troubleshooting when necessary. Organizers Shoaib and Vicky, after doing all the coordination, finding partners and planned how the event would unfold, were running around doing all sorts of tasks that needed to be done druing the two days, aside from providing instructions and orientation on geocoding, crowdsourcing. In between, the two were also seen geocoding, crowdsourcing, writing blogs, monitoring all the channels with other CrisisCamp groups in Toronto, Bangkok and London, making contact on the IRC web chat node, skype, etc. We thank all our sponsors and partners: CrisisCommons, CIE, Humanitarain OpenStreetMaps, Mozilla Drumbeat, SIFEUNSW, and the World Bank.

To all our volunteers - what a fantastic group of people. You've done us all proud!!!! Big, big thanks.

Repost from CrisisCommons: CrisisCamp Sydney update of day 1

Earlier today, ABC Radio News interviewed some of us about CrisisCamp. Our friend George caught part of the interview while in his car using his iphone4, sent it to us, and ended up on the crisis commons blog. Gotta love the speed of the internet.
http://crisiscommons.org/blog/2010/09/03/crisiscamp-sydney-on-abc/

Reposting from http://crisiscommons.org/blog/2010/09/04/crisiscamp-sydney-update-of-day-1/

In just a little over two weeks of planning and organizing for a weekend of geocoding and crowdsourcing, CrisisCamp Sydney organizers kicked off a rainy Saturday morning with 15 volunteers ready to do what they can to help with the reconstruction efforts in the unprecedented Pakistan floods crisis. Partner organizations that made this event happen include: Humanitarian Open Street Maps, Mozilla Drumbeat, Crisis Commons, the University of New South Wales’ Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) the Students in Free Enterprise UNSW (SIFEUNSW) and the World Bank.

The initial plan for the weekend was simply to ask volunteers —developers, IT professionals, university students, community activists and do-gooders to help with drawing a detailed map of the flood water boundary, iron out mapping glitches and creating SOP for map making. Then, after a brief orientation and instruction on geocoding, we needed volunteers to geocode incidents from the ground. Within the first hour of the opening day, volunteers were getting their hands wet on how to geocode. Within a few hours and a few GIS experts and software developers among us, we added crowdsourcing aside from the geocoding that was being done.
As the volunteers work a video of a tutorial for mapping villages has been uploaded to Youtube.

We are expecting to work throughout the day. In the meantime, we appreciate the support and help that the Crisiscommons’ teams in Toronto and Bangkok have provided so far. In a few hours, London will be up and we hope to be able to share our work with them and get on a collaborative mode in ways that we never could have imagined without the internet.

2009 Peter Farrell Cup Winners (repost)

(reposted here as part of a de-cluttering of the CIE website. Stay tuned for announcements of the winners of the PitchFe$t earlier this week. Registration for the 2010 Peter Farrell Cup is now open)

2009 Press Release

'Ad-a-Bottle', a business concept that provides advertising directly on bottled water distributed exclusively to office building food courts, has won first place in an Australian School of Business competition to encourage student entrepreneurism.

The Peter Farrell Challenge Cup entrepreneurship competition offers students the opportunity to bring innovative business ideas to life.
“The Peter Farrell Cup was a catalyst for me to write a business plan and now I'm poised to implement it, and hopefully people will be drinking Ad-a-Bottle by next April,” said winning team member Iris Qi.

Some of the enterprising ideas in this year's Finals included a Wi-Fi based paperless receipt system, an online rental service where parents can order equipment and toys for their children when on holidays, and an electronic display system to eliminate changing price tags.

More than 45 teams from the University of New South Wales and other participating universities entered the competition, hosted by the Innovation, Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship (ICE) Club at the Australian School of Business, with eight teams participating in the Finals held on November 19, 2009.

The finalists presented their business plans to a panel of four judges including high profile business founders and venture capitalists.
Teams were judged on criteria including sound risk analysis, financial attractiveness to potential investors and a clear identification of current market need. The written business plan, oral presentation and responses to judge’s questions helped determine the overall winners.

Christopher Witt, Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at the Australian School of Business, said the aim of the Peter Farrell Cup is to foster entrepreneurship and instill a passion for research and innovation. More than $40,000 in prizes and scholarships was on offer to the finalists to pursue their business ideas.

“The Peter Farrell Cup strives to link research projects and businesses with student teams to produce credible business plans that help all parties. It frames the time period and requirements, and rewards excellence through prizes and scholarships," said Mr Witt.

“Amongst the partners of the CIE is the NSW Enterprise Workshop. This outstanding organisation offers finalists a scholarship to continue into the Enterprise Workshop three month long business planning program, enabling students to take their business ideas to the next level,” he said.

Ramanan Krishnamoorthy, President of the ICE Club, said the Peter Farrell Cup promoted the reality of business innovation as a real option for graduating MBA students.

“The life of an entrepreneur can be extremely rewarding; you are working for yourself on something that you are passionate about, and there is the opportunity to excel to your fullest potential,” said Mr Krishnamoorthy.

2009 Finalist Team Synopsis

Humanity Life Sciences: provides predictive medicine services via DNA analysis of genetic predisposition to inherited conditions in Greater China. The Tag Team: use of electronic display systems to eliminate the manual process of changing price tags via a wireless, centrally controlled system. Tiny Travel: a retail and rental service whereby parents can order equipment, toys and necessities for their children online to be picked up at the holiday destination, lowering baggage necessities. Mercurius Ltd.: a device to estimate the fouling propensity of a given feed water prior to reverse osmosis membrane filtration to predict how frequently a filter must be cleaned or replaced. Ad-a-Bottle: provides advertising on bottled water distributed to food-outlets in office building food courts via exclusive distribution channels. Viva Blu: a chemical-free, cost and energy effective water-purification technology using a photocatalysis reaction. Wildcard: a Wi-Fi based paperless receipt system whereby the receipts are stored in an online personal account. Equigreen: a rechargeable lithium-ion battery designed to power electric vehicles.

Peter Farrell Cup Business Plan Competition - REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN - register your team before 5 PM on 24 September 2010!

Now in its 10th year, the Peter Farrell Cup Competition provides students with the opportunity to bring their innovative business idea to life by pitching to a panel of experts from the Sydney entrepreneurial community. The competition is open to all currently-enrolled UNSW students, and to teams containing at least one currently-enrolled UNSW student. Teams submit a business plan and finalists are selected to pitch their ideas "live" to the judging panel.

Cash prizes are awarded as follows:

• 1st place - $5,000
• 2nd place - $2,500
• 3rd place - $1,000
• 4th place - $500
• 5th place - $500

Details
Open to all AGSM, UNSW,MBS, UTS, University of Sydney and Macquarie University students in two formats:

• Student Teams  
• Start-ups & Existing Businesses

Student Team criteria

• **Must have at least one currently-enrolled UNSW student in the team**
• Students from any of the above universities allowed.  

Start-ups and Existing Businesses criteria

• **Must have at least one currently-enrolled UNSW student in the team**
• Must not have received external funding  
• Must not have revenue exceeding $500k pa  
• Must be less than 2 years old  
• Must be a registered Australian business  
• Must be original work  
• Look for due dates in the new CIE Google Calendar 

Key Dates

1. Team Registration due - 5 pm, Friday 24th September
2. 1-page Synopsis due - 5 pm, Friday 1st October
3. Business Plans due - 5 pm, Friday 29th October
   
4. Finalists Announced - Friday 5th November

Finalists will be pitching their idea to the judges and a live audience on Thursday 18 November

Business Planning Seminar - Tuesday, 5th October 

presented by Dr Martin Bliemel (time & location TBA)

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN - register your team before 5 PM on 24 September 2010!

Diploma in Innovation Management (3451) live for 2011

The revisions to the undergraduate Diploma in Innovation Management (3451) were approved at the Academic Board meeting early last June.

The changes are just now making their way through the administrative and IT systems, and the 2011 Handbook entry is now live:

https://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/undergraduate/programs/2011/3451.html

Thank you again for all your input and feedback in making this a truly interdisciplinary program with emphasis on experiential learning.

If you have any further feedback or know of courses that would be a great fit with the program, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au. 

CrisisCamp Sydney: Hacking for Pakistan

We are having an event at UNSW, Sydney on the weekend of 4-5 Sept to help with the collection, organizing and sharing of disaster response information for relief agencies in Pakistan. The event is in partnership with the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), World Bank , Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and Drumbeat

Please come along if you have:

1. mapping experience or
2. can code/program or
3. can research for information on the internet or 
4. speak local Pakistani languages or 
5. are familiar with the geography of Pakistan or 
6. generally understand disaster response

Please register here: http://pkfloods-sydney.eventbrite.com/

Feel free to share the event details amongst your contacts. If you have any further queries please don't hesitate to contact the

organizers:

Shoaib Burq

Skype:       spatialgoat

Twitter:      http://twitter.com/sabman

Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein

Skype:       Pinpinfeinstein (audio and video)

Twitter:      http://twitter.com/Pyrmontvicky

kind regards

CIE and Ernst & Young present Meet the Entrepreneur: CleanTech

(updated 25 Aug)

<register here>

When

Thursday September 23, 2010 at 5:30 PM for a 6 PM start

Add to my calendar!

 

Where

Ernst & Young Sydney
680 George Street
Level 33
Sydney 2000
Australia 

Details
Hosted by Ernst & Young and Dr Martin Bliemel, Director of the CIE at the Australian School of Business, Meet the Entrepreneur is a moderated panel discussion followed by a lively Q&A session  This is an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurially-minded individuals to learn from leaders in the field. 

At this event, the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce will also be releasing the latest version of the Australia and New Zealand Cleantech portal, supported by
Austrade, Ernst & Young and Industry & Investment NSW.

The panel members for this event are leaders in the Cleantech space and will bring to life the challenges they experienced in moving from a technology to a product, securing finance at different stages, evolving their business models, and finding and working with corporate partners.

This session will be moderated by Dr Marc Newson, Partner and Oceania Cleantech Leader, Ernst & Young. 

Meet the panel:

Stone Wang - Managing Director, Artemis Building Systems.  Stone is an engineer turned business leader with over 20 years experience working as a senior executive for Fortune 500 companies in Australia, Hong Kong and China, including BHP and Corus. Using his cross-cultural expertise, Stone has successfully established a manufacturing base and distribution network in China for Australian and European companies. Fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, he has negotiated joint ventures in China, Hong Kong and the USA.  Artemis Building Systems pty ltd (ABS) is a Building Intergraded Photovoltaic (BIPV) specialist with design, supply and engineering capabilities in Australia and China.   ABS has won the contracts for supplying the services and materials to several prestige projects, such as Sydney Town Hall, TAFE NSW Yallah Campus. 

 Mathew Warnken -  Chief Executive Officer, Crucible Carbon, has a thorough understanding of the waste and resource recovery industry, including policy issues, industry trends, market pressures, business drivers, NGO sector issues and carbon implications (climate change, carbon credits and carbon trading). Matthew is a well regarded analyst and presenter and is also a columnist for environmental management news.  

 Guy Pross - Director, Business Development and Commercial Partnerships, Better Place Australia.  Reporting directly to the Chief Commercial Officer, Mr. Pross is responsible for a range of major projects within the Information Management and Development of Corporate/Government Partnerships. In his previous role, Mr. Pross headed up the Trade Division of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce with a focus on developing the bi-lateral relations between Australia and Israel. He has worked extensively in a range of public policy, business development and marketing roles including roles at Accor Asia Pacific group focused on their deployment across Australia and Asia and a position held at the office of former Israeli Minister and head of the Israeli Security Services, Ret. Admiral Ami Aylaon.

Meet the Moderator:

Dr Marc Newson - Partner and Oceania CleanTech Leader, Ernst & Young.  Marc joined the Ernst & Young partnership in 2008. Prior to this he spent 12 years in product development in the professional services industry. He has facilitated the response to a number of regulatory and economic reform programs including the ASX corporate governance guidelines on behalf of the Business Council of Australia, and the Company Law and Economic Reform Program (CLERP) for the Institute of Chartered Accountants.  Since 1992 Marc has been accumulating practical experiences from the US, South Korea, UK and Australia in the business response to environmental issues and emerging environmental markets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you have any questions about the event or how to register, please contact the CIE (info below).  Thank you  for your attention and we look forward to seeing you at Meet the Entrepreneur!

 Sincerely,

Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
cie@unsw.edu.au
+61 2 9385 9730

Ernst & Young is global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. Worldwide, our 144,000 people are united by our shared values and an unwavering commitment to quality. We make a difference by helping our people, our clients and our wider communities achieve their potential.   Ernst & Young is a proud sponsor of the Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

The CIE is located in the School of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Australian School of Business (ASB).  Its principal ambitions are to improve the quality of innovative thinking in Australia, and to stimulate entrepreneurial skills in students, faculty members, UNSW alumni and the general entrepreneurial public. For more information please visit cie@unsw.edu.au

<register here>