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UT Challenge

Our mission is to offer you a chance to further develop your innovation, prototype or school project and turn it into a business plan, within our network of experienced and successful business partners. Based on technical clusters you will be matched to the right companies and coaches. They want to get to know you personally and are eager to support you during the phase where you develop and enhance your innovation and business plan. It is a great way to receive coaching from specialists and get to know the companies as well. All of this will happen on the campus of University of Twente.

Networking
Networking is an important part in the first step to making it through the first selection. Networking means: you create a ‘support platform’ for your project by collecting votes and comments on your online profile. This will be enabled as of the 1th of May. The total amount of votes has a weight of 20% in the assessment that decides whether you may or may not proceed to the next round (share and promote your innovation via the social media buttons on your profile page). Note that the votes will also be taken into consideration during the final event, which makes your chance at winning the Audience Price of the UT Challenge higher.

Golden Egg Check / Online coaching

The residual 80% of your score depends on the quality of your business plan, which you can create via a special software program, called the Golden Egg Check. This will be enabled on the 6th of March. You'll receive an activation link per mail from the UT Challenge.

The coaches will have access, via secured login, to your business plan as of the 10^th of April. Within the environment of the Golden Egg Check they can provide you with feedback. You can also ask them questions about certain aspects of you plan. These coaches will also be forming a top 50 out of all contestants.

Keep in mind: you cannot continue to the next round if you do not fill in the Golden Egg Check.

NIKOS
In association with NIKOS we’ve put together a great module for the workshops. The workshops will take place between the 4th of April and the 30th of May in the Gallery between 19.00-21.00. All participants are able to visit these workshops. Every workshop is focused on preparing you for the final event at the 13th of June. The final dates will be announced soon via our website and social media.

Speed dates
Whereas the workshops are available to all participants, the speed dates will only be available for the top 50 projects. They will take place on the 2nd of May (13.00 – 17.00). All company coaches will be present in the Gallery. This is an opportunity for you to join the speed date sessions with them, pitch your innovation and receive feedback directly!

 

Final event 
Based on the assessment of the Golden Egg Check a top 20 will be formed. These 20 contestants will proceed to the final event on the 13th of June in building the “Waaier”. The final of the UT Challenge consists out of two parts and will be part of the “UT Entrepreneurial Day”:

1. The first part will take place in the Gallery (11.00-12.30). The best 10 concepts of each category give a pitch in front of a grand jury and the rest of the audience. The grand jury will bring this amount back to the best two concepts in each category.
2. The second part will take place in the Waaier (13.00-17.00), where the Innovation Lecture will be held by miss José van Dijk of Cisco Systems. Besides this, the Prof. van den Kroonenberg, the Van Damme and the Breed Kreiken Award will be handed out.

During the last part of the program our 4 finalists of the UT Challenge 2017 will get their last chance to pitch and convince the jury. They will battle for the UT Challenge Award. But remember: the semi-finalists are still in the running for the ASML Makers Award and the Audience Prize, so make sure to stay and be part of this amazing event until the end. 

 

Prizes
During the final event, we will be giving away various prizes for our winners in the categories ideation (€4.000) and prototyping (€6.000). Besides these prizes, also the ASML Makers Award (€2.500 + 100 hours of multidisciplinary support) and the Audience Prize (€2.000) will be handed out.

Our other partners still have the opportunity to present a prize as well. These will be announced close to the final event.