Teams of UQ students and entrepreneurs will pitch their innovative business ideas and compete for a $100,000 prize and commercialisation opportunities at The University of Queensland Business School Enterprize Pitch Day on 21 October.
Pitch Day is the culmination of Enterprize teams` business plan preparations. Teams will pitch their business concepts to a judging panel of experienced venture capitalists.
The Coordinator of Enterprize and Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at UQ’s Business School, Dr David Gow, said Enterprize was designed to provide entrepreneurs and UQ students with opportunities to commercialise their business dreams.
“There are many innovative ideas that never have the opportunity to be commercialised due to lack of resources and support,” Dr Gow said.
“Enterprize meets a specific need by providing entrepreneurs with the experience of drafting a professional business plan for review by potential investors, networking with venture capitalists and business angels, and by providing the winners with seed capital to further develop their business idea.”
The 2004 Enterprize finalists include:
• A training plan that would transform young people at risk into successful business operators
• A Queensland company developing treatments to halt the progression of heart problems
• Sweeping changes in the production of a horticulture mix, creating Indigenous jobs and positive environmental outcomes
• A new spinal manipulation device delivering promising results in treating debilitating back pain
• A Queensland company which allocates bandwidth on the basis of user needs
• A Brisbane company that could save hotels hundreds of thousands of dollars with hotel-management software
• A new business guidance platform that assists start-up companies through the first critical years of survival to success
• A device that detects food spoilage from microbiological contamination, designed for use by large domestic and international food and meat retailers, including supermarkets and grocery stores
• A suite of web-based tools to help builders find information fast, compare pricing, view models and revolutionise the process of building specifications searches
The UQ Business School Enterprize Pitch Day will be held at on 21 October at 4.00pm in the UQ Centre, Union Rd, UQ St Lucia campus.
The event is open to the public and entry is free.
Media: For further information, contact Karissa Douglass (telephone: 07 3367 1220, mobile: 0410 642 027) or Elizabeth Kerr at UQ Communications (telephone: 07 3365 2339, email: e.kerr@uq.edu.au).
