Blueprint finalists full of inspirational ideas

Finalists in the annual Blueprint business planning competition shared the spotlight at a special awards ceremony.

The eighth annual celebration of innovative business ideas, which is open to all staff, students, graduates and alumni, took place in the Hub, in the Students’ Union on 16 June, and saw over 40 entrants.

One of the winners of the competition was Wade Tovey with his business idea Cato Solution. Wade, Assistant Dean (Enterprise Knowledge Transfer and Employer Engagement) in the School of Health & Social Care, created the idea of an online product for collecting feedback from residents in care homes and their relatives.

The full list of winners and runners-up, all of whom will be going through to the regional Blueprint competition in October, is:

Partner College Award runner-up - Garden of Eve winner - Little Lost Buttons

Social / Community Award runner-up - Gadoomph winner - Edutal

Science and Technology Award runner-up - WarnU winner - Drive Green

Business Award runner-up - Coatsink winner - Cato Solution

2011 also saw the launch of Junior Blueprint which welcomed innovative business ideas from local schools.

Sue Clark, Administrator (New Business Development), said: ‘I came up with the idea of extending the Blueprint competition to younger entrepreneurs within schools in the area.

‘By getting the colleges and schools involved it firstly gets them thinking of entrepreneurship at a young age, and secondly it is a way of promoting the support the University offers to entrepreneurs and start-up businesses.’

The winner of Junior Blueprint was a team from St Aiden’s Academy with their product idea Slim Shady, a sun shade for laptops which reduces screen glare so users can enjoy using their computers outdoors.

Passionate about enterprise Neil Hannah, New Business Manager, said: ‘One of the biggest challenges the Tees Valley faces in the future is to encourage the upcoming generation to become passionate about enterprise. One way is to help them to gain experience of thinking of new and exciting ways to solve the problems that people face in their lives.

‘This is the basis of most new business ideas and what better way for our young students to do this than by entering a competition which allows them to compete with other schools, and also brings them onto Teesside University’s campus to meet real life current entrepreneurs who are already running businesses.’

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