SatJan012022

C4E Newsletter January 2022 - Volume 10

Vol.10


6th Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum - Higher Education: The Third Mission

The 6th Annual Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum – IEF 2021 took place on December 15th 2021 at the University of Cyprus. The 6th Forum embarked an interdisciplinary dialogue on the role of education in Entrepreneurship, the need for the development of entrepreneurial capacity, the employability enhancement of students and graduates, the enablement of research and innovation, research commercialization and all the evolving strategies fulfilling the so called “Third Mission”. Opening remarks have been addressed by the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Associate Professor Panos Markopoulos and the Rector of the University of Cyprus Professor Tasos Christofides. The first part of the Forum featured the PwC Distinguished Lecture "The need for the development of entrepreneurial competencies and the role of Universities in research commercialization" with Associate Professor Katerina Pramatari from the Athens University of Economics and Business, Scientific Coordinator of ACEin and Partner at Uni.Fund. The Lecture was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mr. Evgenios Evgeniou Chairman & CEO at PwC Cyprus 2012-2021, with the theme "Higher Education as a driving force for Technology and Entrepreneurship: Opportunities and challenges for Cyprus". The second part of the Forum featured the Cyprus Entrepreneurship CompetitionCyEC2021, organised for the second consequent year with continuous support by the Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry. More information for all the IEF2021 activities at: https://www.c4e.org.cy/ief2021/  Watch the IEF2021 highlights here https://bit.ly/33OS4wE

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PwC Distinguished Lecture “The need for the development of entrepreneurial competencies and the role of Universities in research commercialization”. 

The keynote speaker of the 6th Forum’s PwC Distinguished Lecture was Associate Professor Katerina Pramatari from the Athens University of Economics and Business, Scientific Coordinator of ACEin and Partner at Uni.Fund. She presented the competencies necessary to drive successful entrepreneurial action and how these can be developed from start to scale-up, and the significant role that Universities can enact in the procedure.

Watch the full lecture: https://bit.ly/3IOF0WS

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The Winners of the Cyprus Entrepreneurship Competition - CyEC2021

The finalists who successfully overcame the challenges and outperformed the rest of the teams based on the CyEC 2021 evaluation criteria were the BolsterUp team Sotiris Pittas and Ioanna Krashia with their centralized interactive platform for the construction industry was the big winner that got the 1st prize. The Intellar team with their platform offering automation and AI to the insurance industry, managed to secure the second place and the S3 (Secure Smart Systems) with their innovative tool for Intrusion Detection Systems for IoT platforms secured the third place. The 8 Finalist Teams have successfully attended the CyEC Acceleration Program and after an extensive period of mentoring and workshops and they presented their enhanced Business Plans in front of the CyEC Jury.  The award ceremony highlighted the pitching presentations of  7 Finalists.

Watch the CyEC2021 Pitches:  https://bit.ly/3Ma37Sc  

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Meet the Finalists of CyEC2021

This year's competition was full of new prospects, ideas and great many new experiences. This year’s emphasis focused on the best exploitation of the CyEC Mentors Network.

We are very proud of all seven participating teams, for showing commitment and dedication to their business idea, for actively participating in the accelerator and tirelessly working towards achieving greater results. We thank them all for being part of the CyEC 2021 journey and we are positive that they all have the skills to take their business idea further.

This year we had diverse teams from different sectors:

Atokes - sector: retail, fintech

BizView - sector: HR, enterprise technology

BolsterUp - sector: construction, data & analytics, machine learning

Intellar - sector: IsurTech, advisory, digital transformation

Renewable Z - sector: renewable energy

S3 (Secure Smart Systems) - sector: ICT, cybersecurity

SportLink - sector: fitness

 

Read more about the teams: https://www.cyec.org.cy/teams/

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Fall Semester 2021: back to the Campus

C4E101: Series of Lectures on Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Fall Semester 2021

During the Fall Semester, 38 students were enrolled for the C4E 101 and 32 for the C4E 102: Group Project in Entrepreneurship. All the C4E Elective Courses are available for undergraduate and postgraduate students.  C4E organized and supported 10 Hybrid Lectures and workshops. The Semester started with the lecture “The Space Industry: present, future and opportunities for graduates” by the President of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO) and President of the Parallel Parliament for Entrepreneurship of the Republic of Cyprus Mr George A Danos. We hosted Konstantinos Vitoratos, Marketing team lead at Proto.io with a fantastic lecture on Prototyping for entrepreneurial success, watch it here: https://bit.ly/3HuAYm3. We had 2 workshops with our partner Odysseas Economides CEO & Founder, ROBO on Intro to 3D Design and Intro to 3D Print. Marios Avraamides, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Cyprus and Pillar Leader of Human Factors & Design at the CYENS Centre of Excellence gave a mind-altering lecture with the title “Thinking bigger, unstuck yourself, and tips on leading a life with less stress” watch it here: https://bit.ly/3oo6QkQ. C4E 101 students were also able to attend 4 workshops of the CyEC2021 Acceleration Program.  

 


Future Talks x UCY: Creating in the tech industry

On September 29 we hosted the very first Future Talk of the well-known successful series of Digital TV with the host Michael Tyrimos in the Learning Resource Centre "Stelios Ioannou"/ UCY Library. This special episode organized with C4E presented the stories of 3 young professionals in the Cyprus Tech Industry. Watch the full episode here: https://bit.ly/3ooAQxf
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C4E 102: Group Project in Entrepreneurship

For Fall Semester 2021, the number of students attending C4E 102 was considerably higher, than any other time in the past. Thirty-three students registered for C4E 102and have been separated into eight teams, each team developing a different business idea. They executed the full development circle of the idea, creating all necessary documentation (business canvas, business plan etc), and demonstrated the whole project at the end of the semester in a presentation. All teams have demonstrated high levels of creativity, critical thinking, and good  planning and organizing skills.        


Research & Analysis

Mapping the Cyprus Startup-up Ecosystem

The new initiative of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, funded by PwC Cyprus aims to map existing and locally born startups for the creation of an official database. The research objectives focus on providing the criteria for approving and monitoring those selected startups for risk assessment, collaborations, and access to information and funding. Additionally, to be able to understand current trends and activities the research will examine the evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cyprus of the past decade to understand the set of factors that hinder and promote such activities and initiatives.

Part of the methodology is conducting in depth interviews with partners, founders, educators, and other stakeholders of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Cyprus.


Collaborative Activities

Innovation in the National Guard Conference
‘‘Innovation can act as a multiplier factor that ensures a competitive advantage at every level. In this spirit, the National Guard, and the Centre of Entrepreneurship of the University of Cyprus, worked closely to successfully organize the Conference ‘’Innovation in the National Guard’’ that aimed to promote the production of prototypes and to recommend feasible solutions, the implementation of which will increase the operational capabilities of the National Guard, in alignment with the Nationals Guard’s Mission. During the conference, distinguished academics from Cypriot Higher Education institutions and research centers, and members of the National Guard came together to present their proposals, tailored to the National Guard’s needs, and to create common ground towards the successful interaction between the Public and the Private sector and the respective University Community.’’


Collaborative Activities

"Let's talk about Scrum ... at Scale" Nicosia meetup
 
November 2020 event's goal was to raise awareness of the 3-5-3 in Scrum and how organizations scrum at scale. The event at University of Cyprus had 25 participants from a wide range of fields. Konstantinos Kareklas, founder of the community and Principal Scrum and Agile Consultant, shared the experience from companies that wished to change to a more agile way of working. The participants were then split in two sessions (Product and Process) for the “Agile Clinics” exercise. In these coaching sessions the participants discussed in depth the challenges and pain points around their area of focus. Find out more: https://bit.ly/3JHGu5C

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