Enterprise UK Blog

Who’s a clever bird then?…

Greetings! Shed here… Wonderful to be with you.

Recently I was hugely honoured to have fronted the ‘IDEAS MASH UP’ competition for MAKE YOUR MARK…

The clever team at MAKE YOUR MARK took one of the success tips contained in my latest book ‘IDEAS MAN’ and turned it into a thrilling contest where students from around Britain had to combine two (normally separate) ideas together to create a brand new, and very exciting, business concept.  The prize for the winning entry was a whopping £2,000, more than enough to get most ideas to the next stage so that they can attract a partner or the investment to launch to market.

For the ‘IDEAS MASH UP’ Grand Final, ten fantastic teams came down to London with their equally superb ideas, ranging from a new way to navigate supermarkets, an innovative basket for wheelchair users and a brilliant new service involving Christmas decorations. You can see the ten finalists here:

http://www.makeyourmark.org.uk/get_involved/ideas_mashup/public_vote

It was totally incredible to see the quality of entries and how our human imagination can create such great new business ideas. In the end, the judges had a long debate about the winner and eventually chose the awesome ‘STUDY BUDGIE’, a concept created by the team from Newcastle Sixth Form College. The ‘STUDY BUDGIE’ is a talking bird that aids learning, and the team had loads of ideas of how it could do this…

One avenue they’re currently exploring is launching the ‘STUDY BUDGIE’ as a recording device that allows anyone to record important chunks of text, quotes or formulas onto the budgie and then the budgie will play these back while you fall asleep, wash-up (if students do that) or watch TV. The mere act of speaking information onto the budgie and then listening to it back will be a huge help in making students organise and remember important key facts that will massively affect their grades in a positive manner.

The concept and brand name ‘STUDY BUDGIE’ are so clever and simple that this deserves to be a huge success. The fact that the idea also benefits people who are trying to learn is also a enormously worthwhile aim and that’s why all the judges felt it deserved to win and why I believe it should be a massive commercial success too… I wish them well and just hope they don’t sell it too cheep. I thank you.

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Shed’s bestselling, inspiring and amusing book IDEAS MAN is out now.

See more of his adventures and products on www.IdeasMan.co.uk

Read Shed’s inspiring story.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Celebrities, Enterprise in the UK, Entrepreneurship, Guest bloggers, Ideas Mashup, Innovation, Shed Simove. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.