. The Business Plan Contest was launched during PICTI’s participation at Expotech exhibition back in November, 2006. The design of the Contest was posted on PICTI’s Web site. It included the Contest information pack. Furthermore, the evaluation criteria and prizes were promoted in the local news papers, on PICTI’s Web site, over technology special interest groups. Further promotion activities included conducting several workshops at PICTI, at AnNajah and Bethlehem Universities to campaign for this Contest.
26 business plans were submitted to the PICTI by the deadline date of 28th of February, 2007. The business plans were evaluated independently. The judging was conducted by an independent panel of professionals and local experts in the fields of business, telecommunication, marketing, management and internet business models.
There were seven winning teams. Three teams are named finalists in the 2006/07 Business Plan Competition have won a total of US$15,000 in cash prizes. Furthermore, one member of each team making it to the fourth, fifth and seventh positions have also won a trip to visit the COMIT Exhibition in Qatar.
The winning teams were announced on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at an awards ceremony that was held at PICTI premises in Al-Bireh. This event was attended by distinguished guests from the public, donor community and private sectors. In his opening statement Mr. Jamil Daher, PICTI Chairman advised that “the early design of the Contest was intended to encourage innovative thinking and entrepreneurship amongst Palestinian students and professionals leading to introduction of ideas that can be used in the business and industries. It was an innovative way to recognize Palestinian entrepreneurs who have mature concepts for unique and innovative ICT products assessed to have strong market potential and in time to incubate these ideas into profitable businesses. Mr. Daher also acknowledged that this contest was part of awareness program on incubation at PICTI and its mission to commercialize ideas and establish new SME in the IT sector.”
Mr. Jamil Daher, added that "start-up and early stage companies play a pivotal role in the future well-being of the ICT sector in Palestine, and this business plan competition provides an excellent way for existing and emerging entrepreneurs to participate."
On his part, Mr. Laith Kassis, PICTI’s General Manager has advised that “the culture and taboo of failure has to be ironed out. Learning from mistakes, the entrepreneur that had failed twice will have a better chance to succeed the third time. PICTI is in the business to nurture and mentor these entrepreneurs as well.” He added “the real value of creating a business plan contest is not in having the finished product in hand; rather, the value for entrepreneurs lies in the process of researching and thinking about a business in a systematic way. The act of planning helps an entrepreneur to research and look at the idea critically. Business plan may take time now, but it avoids costly mistakes later.”
Mr. Kassis presentation during the award ceremony introduced the attendees to the life cycle of financing new information technology start-up companies and highlighted the challenge to cover the equity gap related to proof of concept and seed stages.
The winners presented new technology inventions. Two promising prototypes include a device that transforms sound waves to electrical charges that has been developed by a junior female physics student from Birzeit University. Another software prototype is head recognition security system that was developed by another female student graduated from Jordanian tertiary system. PICTI’s preliminary research indicated that these inventions are still under research and development stages in the Western worlds as well.
The business plan contest also introduced new innovations. The business plan participants, these entrepreneurs, have introduced new ideas that would create a desired future economic change either to products, business processes or services when it is realized either by increasing customer or producer value. The innovation was intended to make someone better off and to solve a problem in the market place as identified by these entrepreneurs.
For example, new innovations were presented to effect economic change throughout the business chain in the Palestinian stock market by means of harnessing mobile technologies. Another idea is to disseminate education material based on Open Source Technologies on flash cards. Another business opportunity was presented by an existing entrepreneur to develop a real estate management system to the ever growing real estate industry in the Gulf region. The entrepreneur has some prospective clients even lined up for the envisioned product. Other areas of interest demonstrated by entrepreneurs involved an early prototype of GIS software that can work well with all levels of governments as a planning tool. The best business plan presented and the first award went to innovation involving mobile technology platforms that would make the interface experience much user friendly and convenient to end users to use video, voice and multimedia services.
Other innovative ideas participated in the Contest that did not win a prize, but should not go unnoticed; include multimedia products about the history of Jerusalem and vocational training coaching.
Eng. Hasan Omar advised that “winners and non-winners alike will be asked to sign up for the pre-incubation program at PICTI for further business plan consultations and for the purpose of preparing investment briefs.”
It is worth noting that the Business Plan Contest Awards launched by PICTI for 2006/07 were sponsored by the infoDev program for incubation in developing countries. PICTI management will be soliciting new sponsors for future rounds for this contest.