Call for Ideas & Poster Competition

How does it work?

We select the 20-30 most promising ideas from all submitted ideas. We are calling on as many AUAS students as possible for these ideas, asking who would like to strengthen your team!

In this way we want to form as many interdisciplinary teams as possible to actually realize the ideas. (Important: the idea remains yours)

In addition, we help promising ideas to:

• Get in touch with scientists and experts who may be able to contribute to your idea
• You will be invited to the AUAS Startup Day
• You get all the information to sign up for the 10K Incubator
• If you also make a poster, you have a chance to win 1,000 euros!

Why participate?

When you, as a student, want to realize an innovative idea and start a company, you learn to collaborate with others, to present, to persevere and to think strategically. And by registering your idea, you are taking the first steps to really make an impact with your idea, the experience you gain with this will help you for the rest of your career.

In addition:

• You get valuable feedback
• Starting a business and the knowledge you gain will look good on your CV
• You get to know new people with a different background than yourself, this is very inspired
• You get the chance to go all out for your own idea and make a real impact.
• Who knows, you might end up with your own company or succeed in making your idea part of a larger organization and you will soon make social and sustainable impact with your idea!

Participating

You can register your idea via our email venturecentre@hva.nl until Friday 28 October, 2022. When you register, you briefly explain the following:

• What problem does your idea solve
• Who benefits from that
• How your idea will work (e.g. do you use a special technology)
• What expertise you still lack to realize the idea

After the deadline you will receive a message if your idea is among the 20 to 30 most promising ideas selected by the jury.

Bonus: Poster Competition

In addition to only registering your idea, you can also participate in the poster competition where you can win a main prize of 1,000 euros.

Why join?

You can win € 1,000 to get started on realizing your idea, for example! Or €500 or €250 if you come second or third.*

But it also provides visibility for your idea and yourself! In addition, a jury of experts will look at your idea and you will always receive feedback on your idea and poster.

The poster

Students from all disciplines can participate in the Poster Competition. And so the creative solutions and sustainable innovations can cover all kinds of subjects: from sports to education and from energy transition to care.

The six points that you should at least bring back to the poster are:

1. What problem do you solve or what opportunity do you capitalize on with your idea or solution? How big is this problem?
2. What is the added value of your idea? What difference does your idea make?
3. For which target group(s) is your idea relevant? Who are you helping with this solution? How big are these groups?
4. How does your idea work? For example, are you going to use a technology or a certain process or invention? Clearly show what the product or process will look like and what properties it has.
5. What makes your idea better than existing solutions? What is the Leap Forward? What makes it innovative?
6. Show who you are and why you have the motivation, knowledge and skills to develop (and maybe continue to work on) this idea

In addition, the following requirements are important:

• The poster must answer the six questions as described above
• The poster should speak for itself, no further explanation is needed.
• The poster is printed on an A1-sized foam board in portrait or landscape format. The short side must be at least 1000px wide.
• The poster is mainly explanatory and not promotional, it looks more like a research poster than a promotional poster (see examples below).

^{Note: The poster you make is not! an advertising poster, but a poster on which you explain what your idea is, how it works, what problem it solves, how big the problem is and why you have this idea can develop. You can use anything from text to infographics on the poster to explain this idea, and if you're looking for an example of such posters, it's best to search Google Images for 'academic poster'.}

^{* The amounts received are to be spend on the realisation of the idea. We will aks you to justify this.}

Enrolling

This competition is open to students from all study programs and faculties of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam.

The requirements to participate are:

1. You have developed the idea yourself and it is original work
2. You are a bachelor student at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
3. Students can only be part of one team and teams can only submit one idea.

Do you want to participate in the poster competition? Then register your idea for the Calls for Ideas and send your poster to venturecentre@hva.nl.

The deadline for submitting the poster is Friday 25 November 2022 (note: for the Call for Ideas this is Firday 28 Ocotober), after which the winners will be announced during the AUAS Startup Day on 19 January 2023.

FAQ: Frequently asked questions

If I submit my idea for the Call for Ideas and/or Poster Competition, do I still own the idea?

Do I have to come up with the idea as part of my education?

What if I am not sure if I would want to be an entrepreneur or keep working on this idea, can I still join the Call for Ideas and Poster Competition?