Nemire ‘13 Takes 1st at Regional Idea Competition
Hiram College senior, Bryan Nemire, took 1st Place at the Entrepreneurship Education Consortium’s (EEC) idealabs regional competition on March 21st at Kent State University. Nemire, an environmental studies and biology major, won with his idea Citrus Icer, a novel product for the agricultural industry.
Nemire, representing Hiram, competed with students representing ten of the EEC’s eleven member institutions – Ashland University, Baldwin Wallace University, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, John Carroll University, Kent State University, Lake Erie College, University of Akron, and University of Mt. Union. All ten students won the opportunity to represent their college or university by winning at their institution’s campus competition. Nemire won Hiram’s ideabuild! competition sponsored by the Center for Integrated Entrepreneurship on February 28th.
Seven judges, with a vast depth and breadth of entrepreneurial experience, listened as each team had seven minutes to present their concept and respond to three minutes of questions by the judges. The judges also pre-reviewed each participant’s concept paper prior to the evening’s presentations. They collectively agreed that they were presented with ten great, plausible ideas and it was a tough decision to select the top three. Joining Nemire in the winner’s circle were Cleveland State’s Kevin Met with Matchstick and Case Western Reserve’s Chimakika Okoye and Marie Brosovich with Swipe U-Lock.
Nemire received encouragement from all the judges, and plans to continue researching and developing his idea.
The EEC is a consortium of eleven public and private colleges and universities in Northeast Ohio dedicated to providing practical, experiential and theoretical entrepreneurship education to Northeast Ohio undergraduate students of all disciplines.
Idea Competitions
Integrated Entrepreneurship at Hiram College annually hosts a series of idea competitions. ideablitz! is an idea generation and development event held during the Fall 12 week semester. The second idea competition, ideabuild! is held in the Spring 12 week. ideabuild! picks up where ideablitz! leaves off, asking participants to examine the feasibility of their enterprise concepts. The competitions are designed to help anyone with an innovative idea organize and communicate their concept to potential investors and collaborators. Ideas can range from new inventions or solutions to problems, to profit or non-profit enterprises, to projects that respond to a felt need.
For ideablitz!, contestants develop their enterprise idea through the creation of a written concept statement and present the concept to a panel of judges and an audience of friends, family, and enterprise aficionados. Each contestant has six minutes to convince the judges they have a winning idea: a three-minute Rocket Pitch® followed by three minutes of questions.
For ideabuild! contestants test the viability of the enterprise idea by conducting a feasibility study.
