£125,000 prizes from Cisco for great business ideas
Cisco £125,000 prize fund for start up businesses
With around £125,000 in prizes, the Cisco British Innovation Gateway (BIG) Awards is an annual open innovation competition to discover and reward the finest examples of the UK's most innovative start-ups. And there's less than a week to go until the 1 May deadline
The Big Awards are open to individuals or groups in the UK, applicants can enter their ideas into one of five categories:
- Big Data
- Collaboration including.Video & Social Media
- Future Cities
- Internet of Things
- Mobility
All you need to do is to outline your BIG idea in 250 words or less. - you will have the opportunity to provide more information at a later stage of the contest. Once submitted, your idea will be moderated to ensure that it meets the contest guidelines
The overall winner will receive a total prize package of approximately £75k cash, 12 months mentoring from Cisco and a 12 month support package covering PR, marketing & legal services. Runner's up and semi-finalists will also receive cash and technology to support and accelerate the development of their businesses.
1st Place:
- £62,000 in cash
- 12 months of technology and business mentoring from leading Cisco engineers and managers
- £18,500 in 12 month Digital Marketing support from dnx
- Basic digital build
- £18,500 US in 12 month PR support from Octopus Communications
- £9,250 in legal services from Bird & Bird
2nd Place:
- £15,500 in cash
- 12 months of technology and business mentoring from leading Cisco engineers and managers
- 12 months of mentoring support (to a maximum of a further 3 meetings) and initial legal workshop with two leading technology lawyers from Bird & Bird
3rd Place:
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
- £6,200 in cash
- 12 months of technology and business mentoring from leading Cisco engineers and managers
- Initial legal workshop with two leading technology lawyers from Bird & Bird
To enter the competition, entrants must register online to submit their ideas by midnight on 1 May 2012. The competition will run until September 2012 and involves a four-stage judging process, with the final of the Awards taking place at a special event on 12 September, where the six finalists will present their business plans live to a judging panel before the winner is chosen.
6-screen laptop manufacturer is very much alive — Acme Portable's Megapac L3 is the original hexadisplay mobile powerstation and is still on sale, shame that it is still using old dual CPU tech from AMD and Intel
US university creates world's biggest 3D printer ever and it can even use wood dust — named Factory of the Future 1.0, it can print objects almost the size of 40 standard containers