Friday 09-10-2015 - 15:03

Hello! I'm Ashley Bell, GCU's Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE) Intern... and Vice President of the IES... and Head of New Societies and Membership... and 4th Year BA (Hons) Management, Technology and Enterprise Student... (YEAH I KNOW). 

You may have seen me about the university with an orange shirt on, asking you,

"What you're studying?"

and 

"Have you ever thought about starting your own business one day?"

70+ of you were nice enough to stop by and tell me your super crazy, yet fun, and somewhat unrealistic business ideas! Some for improving the culture of reinventing the cafe experience, some for the embetterment of consumer foods and some where just out of this world, like waffle guns, smoking robots and teleportation tourism! 

You were kind enough to stop for a couple more minutes to submit your idea because winning £100 for a really good business idea (well, good out of the postcard submissions I had receieved!) sounded ace. 

The National winner is yet to be announced who will win £100 for the entry level idea. However, our GCU Campus winner, Mr Aidan Kelly, student of Mechanical and Electronic Systems Engineering won £50 from the decision made by Caledonian Creates' Bruce Wood and myself for his idea for charger for bikes and other cool features I can't share for potential patenting reasons! So well done Aidan for being super cool!

It was a hard chosing, but Jeff Barclay also received a bottle of red from myself, as runner up. So bravo Jeff!

There is going to be more competitions and opportunities through the year with SIE Fresh Ideas, The Grad Factor, and the infamous Young Innovators Challenge!

Every month from October, there will be the opportunity to win £200-£500 for your idea. Click here for more information on Fresh Ideas: http://www.sie.ac.uk/competition.php?id=2

- Ashley, VP of GCU IES/SIE Intern