CommercialiSE Business Planning Competition Cohort 4
Tuesday 31st March 2009
Judges face a tough decision in latest Business Planning competition.
The latest Cohort of budding entrepreneurs from the CommercialiSE Fellows business training programme impressed the judges in a competition to present their Business Plans in an event held on 31st March 2009 at Green Park in Reading.
Now in its third year, the occasion saw the highest number of CommercialiSE Fellows presenting to date, with 16 Fellows presenting to 3 panels made up of regional judges from some of the 11 universities who participate in the CommercialiSE Programme.
An expert panel made up of Susan Jones (Buckinghamshire New University), Chris Harlow (Oxford Brookes University), Paul Williams (University of Greenwich), Claire Griffith (University of Brighton), Tom Harris (Hi Consulting) and Sally Atkinson (University of Sussex) provided constructive comments, pointed out issues to avoid when developing a business plan and gave helpful advice on the key elements of successful funding.
The standard of entries was very high, with the judges having a tough decision to select the three finalists who then went forward to a Main Panel judged by Dr Tom Harris of Hi Consulting and Sue Stockdale of Mission Possible.
The overall winner was Steve Britt from Brighton University who impressed the judges with his development and commercialisation of a retro-fit cycle propulsion system. The product has gone from concept, through various prototype stages to the demonstration of the potential of the system.
Alan Noake from the University of Kent was one of the runners-up, with his company AdBasement.com which creates web advertising space for the many thousands of small niche publications and websites wishing to attract potential advertisers and which is now in the stages of promotion.
The judges also selected Colin Singleton, of the University of Reading who presented a retail-focused Agent-Based Model (in the form of a piece of computer software) aimed at providing retailers with insightful information on customer transactions and purchase motivation.
For more information about the CommercialiSE Programme, contact::
Beverley Lockton
CommercialiSE Programme Manager
Tel. 01865 483496
