Helping build intellectual capital in Azerbaijan
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• Contribution to the enhancement of innovative ecosystem in Azerbaijan.
• Help generation and development of new ideas and approaches in entrepreneurship
• Support for building young people’s technology-based business capabilities
• Promote successful business concepts and start-ups
BP today announced its support for a students’ competition aimed to promote innovative technology and business ideas and start-ups in Azerbaijan. The “Yeni Fikir ” (New Ideas) start-up competition is held annually by Baku Engineering University in support of development of innovative techno-entrepreneurship concepts and projects.
This is the 6th competition and focuses on two objectives – a) generation and development of new ideas and projects, and b) enhancement and improvement of existing start-ups. To achieve these goals, a set of pre- and post-competition activities such as mentorships, workshops and trainings are planned as part of the BP-funded scope of the project. BP will also establish an Incubation and Acceleration Centre equipped with digital hardware and software for the competition participants to be able to work in teams generating new ideas and developing them into successful start-up projects.
The competition will select five best ideas and projects as award-winners and these will continue to receive BP-funded support through specifically-designed incubation and acceleration programmes to further enhance and improve their start-ups towards finding successful entrepreneurship opportunities.
Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, BP’s Vice President, Communications, External Affairs, Strategy and Region, said in his address to the competition opening event held in Baku today: “One of the main objectives of BP’s educational projects in Azerbaijan is to help build strong intellectual capital for the country’s future. We believe this competition offers a great opportunity for a large group of technology- and innovation-biased people to work together and to join their intellectual capabilities and ambitions for the enhancement of the country’s innovation ecosystem. The ultimate result that we expect from this project is a big boost to high technology-based small and medium-sized entrepreneurship efforts in the country.
“We expect around 150 start-up applications from more than 400 participants. While we target to attract new start-ups and innovative ideas we will also help the existing successful projects to further improve and commercialise their initiatives. For this purpose, special training programmes are planned to help the start-up teams work together in the newly-built Incubation and Acceleration Centre and learn how to conduct methodologically substantiated research and other activities to realise their innovative concepts and projects.”
The value of the project is around 118,000AZN with the duration of eight months (February-October 2019).