Idea Transform winners to get co-working and mentoring through ideaSpace
Idea Transform's promise to provide winners of its startup weekend with the kind of long term support lacking in many comparable offerings has landed major backing from the ideaSpace Enterprise Accelerator.
Six winning individuals at the first Idea Transform event in April will benefit from free membership of ideaSpace, providing it with access to co-working facilities in Cambridge as well as the support of the extensive ideaSpace network.
Idea Transform is a startup bootcamp aimed at technologies across sectors, but united in a focus on making a positive difference to the world. Created in partnership with the University of Cambridge's Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL), the programme has promised to do as much as it can to turn the ideas into sustainable longer term businesses.
The first event in the programme is a weekend startup bootcamp that will take place between 20 and 22 April 2012 at the Cambridge Judge Business School. It aims to team up people with ideas and those with business, marketing and technical skills to work together intensely over the weekend in order to develop meaningful and innovative projects.
The weekend itself will involve the backing of a series of hands-on, experienced mentors and keynote speakers, but with the ideaSpace help, part of that will be available beyond just the two days.
"We wanted to support Idea Transform as it will bring people together to develop projects that solve meaningful real world problems," said Stewart McTavish, innovation and support director at ideaSpace.
"By creating teams in a live project development environment the people involved have a perfect opportunity to learn about translating innovative ideas into actionable projects, and then receive the support they need to move forward over the longer term. By working with them after the weekend through our membership programme we can help accelerate these projects towards becoming fully-fledged, sustainable businesses."
At the end of the weekend an international judging panel will select those projects that show the most promise and Idea Transform will then work closely with them to provide on-going mentoring and support. The three-month prize membership of ideaSpace will be available to six winning team members from the Idea Transform weekend.
The long-term support is a continuation of an idea from the Cambridge Startup Weekend run last year by Mauro Ciaccio, also co-founder of Idea Transform. "When we created Idea Transform we were determined that it would provide long term support to nurture innovative and meaningful projects," said Ciaccio.
"Consequently working with ideaSpace is a natural next step and we welcome their generous support, which will help nurture a winning project by connecting them with the Cambridge startup community centred on ideaSpace as well as providing state of the art facilities, mentoring and guidance."
Tickets are on sale now for the first Idea Transform event, with early bird discounts available.
For more information and to see the full programme visit www.ideatransform.org, follow them on twitter (@ideatransform) or email info@ideatransform.org
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