The School of Business and Management and the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development, Alliance & Research (CEDAR) in collaboration with WEHotels, successfully held the IdeaFest competition on the 28^th of March 2023 at UCLan Cyprus with the participation of university’s students, academics and staff. The competition opened with a speech from Dr Fanos Tekelas, Course Leader of BA(Hons) Business Administration and Director of CEDAR, welcoming everyone to the event. Afterwards, Mr Nicos Andronicou, Founder and CEO of WEHotels took the step and presented his entrepreneurial success story.  Mr Olympios Toumazou, Founder and CEO of RAI Consulting followed, presenting the development of his company over the years and the important aspects that every business needs to be aware of.

 To participate in the competition teams of students had to present posters of their business idea highlighting their value proposition, key activities, key partners, customer segment, main partners and cost structure, based on the business model canvas. In total, 24 groups of students participated in the competition and shared their innovative new business ideas in front of successful and experienced entrepreneurs. The winners were announced during the Awards Ceremony and this year the winning idea was “ECOSTATE” which won first place and the prize of €1000 while the second place and the prize of €500 were awarded to the business idea titled “BioHair”.

The IdeaFest was organised by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development, Alliance and Research (CEDAR) and UCLan Cyprus in collaboration with WEHotels with the support of Gain Ventures Studios, Synthesis Center for Research and Education and RAI Consultants.

UCLan Cyprus and CEDAR express their gratitude to the sponsors of the competition which without their valuable contribution, the competition wouldn’t add value to the existing entrepreneurial ecosystem and entrepreneurial knowledge transfer.