The Network of Technological Springboards of Catalonia organizes an anual Contest of business ideas with the aim of encouraging students and graduates to apply the knowledge achieved during their studies and professional experience to the development of innovative services and products that have a possibility of becomming comercialized.

Any person or group who have an business idea can participate in the contest. Incorporated enterprises can not participate.

The contest includes a training and assessment period to write a business plan which will be presented to the jury.

The best projects will be awarded money and professional services to support in the constitution of a company.

For further information about the 7th contest, please click here.

2006 Awards

The awards ceremony of the 6th Contest of business ideas took place last November 9 at the Hilton Hotel in Barcelona. This year the contest was organised by the Network of Technological Springboards of the CIDEM and the technical secretariat of UPC's (Technical University of Catalonia) Innova Programme.

This initiative has been awarding ideas and projects of Catalan entrepreneurs for the last 6 years and this year counted with the participation of all the Catalan universities. From more than 80 projects from different sectors and areas that entered the competition, 14 have reached the final.

The first prize was worth € 3.600 and went to the business project ACTIO, carried out by Sergio Ruiz, Mª José Soneira and Alejandro López-Gil, doctors of telecommunications engineering and engineer respectively. Their project is a new system which offers an analysis of works of art in two parts: scientific global analysis and optical molecular localized analysis (traceability), with which they can achieve a better preservation of works of art and therefore, improve their dating, authentication and cataloguing.

Xavier Orduña and Joan Pinyol, computer engineers, together with Albert Bigorra, Geography graduate, got the second prize (worth €1.800) in recognition for the project DEXMA, that provides solutions for environmental data collection by means of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). These sensors allow monitoring data efficiently and with a low cost, offering high quality in terms of automation, resolution, flexibility and frequency.

The third prize (€1.200) went to the project MICROTON COMPACTO PARA LA RADIOTERAPIA INTRAOPERATORIA (Compact Microton for Intraoperative Radiotherapy): the objective is creating a company named Electron Loop, SA, and offer cancers treatments with IORT (Intraoperative Radiotherapy), a developed technique in different European countries but not established in Spain.

On the other hand, other projects were also awarded:

The Premi Solvay for entrepreneurship went to the project Aplicat, carried out by Isabel Salla and Sandra Ramos.

A special mention was given to the projects Trainia, Giant Plastic Bioreactors and Intelligent Pharma.

Rosa Maria Druguet was awarded with the best tutor award.

From the CIDEM, we would like to congratulate all the awarded persons and encourage them to keep working on this research line.

Entrepreneurs of MICROTON project are awarded by the Industry Secretary and Director of the CIDEM, Mr Joan Josep Berbel, and UPC's rector Mr Antoni Giró Roca.	Sergio Ruiz and Alejandro López-Gil pick up their award for their project ACTIO.
DEXMA - Xavier Orduña, Albert Bigorra and Joan Pinyol's project - was awarded with the second prize.	Rector of the Technical University of Catalonia, Mr Antoni Giró, during his speech.
A workmate of Rosa Druguet picks up her best tutor award.	Isabel Salla and Sandra Ramos: entrepreneuship's Solvay award for Aplicat.
All awarded persons together with the Director of the CIDEM and UPC's rector.	General picture of the ceremony.