Published on: Thursday, 06 October 2011

Cork County and City Enterprise Boards Cork Institute of Technology Prize for Innovation

Competition

All details of the competition, including the calendar of events for the year are available here

The Student Interns (Isabel Rossiter and John Sheehy), the Entrepreneur in Residence, Kieran Moynihan, and Glynis Dennehy from the Development Office, are available to visit individual classes to encourage students to participate in the competition over the next few weeks. 

Please note that the “Entrepreneurship Training” and individual class visits need to be booked in advance with Isabel Rossiter at isabel.rossiter@cit.ie

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Next year will see the ten year anniversary of the highly successful Cork County and City Enterprise Boards Cork Institute of Technology Prize for Innovation - a competition that awards cash prizes worth €10,000 to those whose inventions and business ideas are judged most creative, novel, innovative and likely to succeed in the marketplace.

A new initiative has been introduced this year which has been applauded by Sean O’Sullivan, CEO of the South Cork Enterprise Board. ‘Working in teams or individually students will receive “entrepreneurship training” from CIT’s Entrepreneur in Residence, Kieran Moynihan, who will guide them in putting a business plan together. The training will take place in the NIMBUS Centre on CIT’s BishopstownCampus. They will receive training on spotting the opportunity, sales and marketing, building products and services and raising funding for their business."

Kieran Moynihan said “We are very excited to lay the foundation for a future wave of entrepreneurs in Ireland through the CIT Prize for Innovation. Throughout the world, entrepreneurs are starting businesses in their early twenties and younger – we need to change the status quo in Ireland to encourage and equip our young people to start successful businesses at any stage in their career. Over recent years as I have worked with the student teams, I have been hugely impressed by their calibre, their capacity to innovate, and this year promises to be the best yet building on ten great years of innovation.”

Myles Murray, from Togher in Cork was the overall prize winner of the 2011 CIT Prize for Innovation with his business PMD Solutions and he is now a participant on the Genesis Enterprise Programme (GEP). Myles continued with his business/product after taking the title of CIT Entrepreneur of the Year at CIT.  Myles said “during my time at CIT, innovation was always encouraged during our course work and through competitions such as the CIT Prize for Innovation. Participating in the competition allowed me to reality check my business idea with an experienced judging panel and the feedback which I got was very constructive. After the awards, CIT helped progress my business idea by promoting me as potential GEP candidate and four months later, from my time in the programme, my business is growing and evolving.”

The GEP provides a package of supports to entrepreneurs to help accelerate the development of their business in the first twelve months of operation.