Business plan competition “Iron Entrepreneur” took place on April 24, 2013 in Kiev as a part of Kiev Startup Week. Student teams from 15 Ukrainian cities participated in the competition.
“Iron entrepreneur” competition is a series of business games, in which participants suggest possible ways to use the new technology, together as a team select the most promising product, create business model and make a presentation of the proposed solutions.
The event is held and organized by Moscow Higher School of Economics. A theme for semifinal was proposed by AR23D Studio – the main sponsor of the semifinal. V. Goncharuk, Oleg Saydak (FINAM) were among the jury members.
The main task for contestants this time was to come up with a business idea for Google Glass and to draw up a short business plan of their idea. Teams had to come up with as many ideas as possible, choose the most promising one from a commercial point of view, develop a business model for this idea, determine the target audience and promotion techniques for this new product, and prepare a presentation in Power Point. Seams easy? Then imagine you have only one hour to do all this!
The jury noted the high creativity of participants. All teams presented interesting ideas mostly related to B2B services – for transport and construction companies, museums, logistics and courier delivery services companies, etc.
There were two winners: the team that offered to use this technology to optimize warehouse logistics and the team with an idea of using Google Glass in museums to improve visitor experience. These two teams will represent Ukraine in the final, which will take place on May 17, 2013 in Moscow. They will compete with another 15 teams from Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia regions.
Such events as “Iron Entrepreneur” is a great way to popularize technological entrepreneurship, motivate students of various universities to work in IT sphere, develop students’ skills of teamwork and project presentations and to offer creators of technology unusual product solutions.