Prosperity. Happiness Works.

Twelve new high-tech and knowledge-intensive business ventures and 28 researchers are taking part in University College Dublin’s (UCD) 2012 entrepreneurship programme.

The annual Campus Company Development Programme (CCDP), which has just commenced at NovaUCD, assists UCD academic and research entrepreneurs in bringing their innovative ideas from intellectual concepts to fully developed and sound commercial businesses.
Just under 190 new ventures and 290 individuals have to date completed this programme which has run since 1996.
The programme culminates with a high profile Awards Evening which will be held in November. At the end of this event the UCD 2012 Start-Up of the Year Award will be presented to one of the participating ventures. Former winners of this prestigious Award include companies such as BiancaMed, Equinome, Logentries and RendezVu.
This year a prize fund of over €35,000 will be available to the 2012 CCDP award winners. In addition to cash prizes and 6-months free NovaUCD desk space, Aristo, Arthur Cox, Delaney Financial Consultancy, Deloitte and Newmarket Partnership will be providing professional services. AccountsIQ will also be providing a free 1-year subscription to its accountancy software.
For further information contact Micéal Whelan, University College Dublin, Communications Manager (Innovation), e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, t: + 353 1 716 3712

Entries are now being accepted for the Irish Times Digital Challenge.
The philosophy behind this competition is that everything that is anything can be migrated to digital platforms. It aims to reward and mentor innovative ventures that can facilitate or develop new opportunities around this switch.

The competition was inspired by an initiative of senior executives at Pepsi. They saw the value of engaging with early-stage digital companies that might help to provide insights and innovation to the soft drink maker. The PepsiCo10 competition was born out of this, and run in conjunction with Highland Capital Partners, and a participant of Highland Capital Partners is now working with the Irish Times on The Irish Times Digital Challenge.
There is a major bonus to the winner of The Irish Times Digital Challenge in the access their innovation will have to Irish Times users  – up to several million per month. Each finalist will receive marketing to the value of €10,000 while the overall winner will receive investment funds to the value of €50,000. To assist the finalists in developing their path to market, NDRC LaunchPad will run a mini-startup incubator inside The Irish Times over eight weeks. In addition to extensive mentoring, there will be €10,000 worth of free legal, accounting, and taxation advice for the finalists over the eight weeks. Enterprise Ireland will also be offering support during this phase.
To register your interest - http://www.irishtimesidealab.com/

The true potential of participants in Startupbootcamp Dublin, a mentorship-based programme will be seen at its investor demo day on 16 May.

Four Irish and six international teams from Israel, Brazil, US, China, Romania, Lithuania and Poland selected from over 150 international applicants, will pitch their start-up businesses to a global panel of over 100 investors.
These new businesses have a good chance of job creation thanks to the Startupbootcamp model. Eoghan Jennings who is behind the Dublin initiative explains: “what we’re trying to do is build tomorrow’s employers.”
The programme focuses on creating sounder businesses rather than focusing on funding. They create traction with customers before seeking funding or hiring people.
“Some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past, if we’ve funded an idea before we reached the product/market fit, jobs aren’t created and funds evaporate.”

Do you find the net is just not fast enough to meet your needs? There’s reason for concern – the accessible bandwidth of the optical fibre that makes up the core of the Internet is almost full.

Luckily, an Irish company Pilot Photonics is developing technology that allows more information to be packed into existing optical fibres by cleverly bonding together several data channels in the fibre, cutting down on wasted bandwidth.
The new technology is compatible with the existing optical fibres that currently connect countries and continents around the world. “For the end user of the Internet it means a faster, higher quality link through the internet,” says Dr Philip Perry, CEO.
Pilot Photonics Ltd, a spin-out company built on the work of research teams in Dublin City University and the Tyndall National Institute in Cork has succeeded in attracting seed investment of €300,000 to find a route to market for this technology.

Ireland could be getting its very own ‘television’ programme dedicated to the coverage of innovative companies, if a recent pilot is commissioned as a new series.
The national broadcaster last week aired a pilot programme ‘Enterprising Ireland’ exclusively on the web and RTÉ NewsNow.

Presenter Damien Tiernan opened the 10-minute feature with a reference to Ireland’s success with heavy hitters such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook. “But there’s a lot of places around the country where innovation, research and job creation go hand in hand.”
The pilot programme visited Arclabs in Waterford – an incubation centre home to approximately 20 startups in the digital and tech scene as well as research group TSSG. Companies featured include FeedHenry, GBR Direct, Betapond and ZolkC.
The promising pilot got good feedback from the Twitterati in the south east at least. Here’s hoping the remainder of the series is on the way to see what is happening in the digital and tech scene nationwide.
See the Enterprising Ireland programme on: http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0402/media-3246038.html