Now in its eighth year, the BizIdea Competition at the University of the West of England keeps on attracting brilliant entrepreneurial ideas. This year's winners were awarded their prizes at a special presentation evening on Thursday 7th May at Bristol's Mercure Holland House Hotel.
 

Representatives from various regional businesses and organisations attended the inspiring event. Jamie Murray-Wells, who set up his company Glasses Direct while still a student at UWE, discussed his experiences by taking part in a special guest interview. At 26 years old, he has just been made the youngest-ever recipient of the Queen's Award for Enterprise – one of the UK's most prestigious business-related awards.

He said, “Some of the biggest businesses today started in people's homes or garages. It is absolutely right that universities who have all this talent are using competitions like the BizIdea and business incubators to engender new entrepreneurs.”

The keynote speaker was UWE alumnus James Dunlop, whose company myhab provides recyclable festival dwellings for ecologically concerned music-lovers. After winning the New Designers Award in 2006 he decided to seek funding, successfully pitching to city firm MINT who offered him the investment required to realise his business.

Last year, Poppy Stephenson and her team won the Social Enterprise category in the BizIdea with the Bristol Community Festival Group. She spoke about her experiences of the competition and her first year in UWE Ventures Bristol, the University's new city-centre business incubation centre.

The BizIdea is run by RBI and aims to encourage and support students, staff and alumni to make their businesses become reality. This year's competition was hotter than ever, with an increased number of entrants vying for some fantastic prizes.

The winner of each category received £5000 and a year of rent-free space in UWE Ventures Bristol. In addition, all the winners can enrol on Bristol Business School's Sustainability Support for Small Business (S3) course free of charge. Runner-up awards, merit awards and a special Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) award were also up for grabs.

‘Fire Hand’ were successful in the business category. The team were made up of Tim Baxter, Ashley Moore and Alex King. Ashley said, “I was shocked and surprised because when I saw the other competitors' ideas I thought we would never win. It is remarkable to be in the company of Jamie, James and the previous winners.”

Other winners included Vashti Richards for her Social Enterprise entry Deki Development and Amy Butlin and Jonathan Pound for Lateral Effects in the Creative Design category.

Runners-up were Jason Sprague, Matt Studley and David McGoran with Social Walking (business category); Lorraine Gibbs and Adriene Layne with Layne Gibbs Communications (social enterprise category) and Laura Boyle and Louise Haswell with Sew That Jazz (creative design category). Grant Mercer and Craig Shirley picked up the CIM award for the business plan with the best marketing element for their idea OCD Informational Group.

Equally important to all the above prize recipients was the experience of developing a ready for market business plan, don’t miss the opportunity to have a crack at entrepreneurial success next year, get innovative now.