This innovative business creation project competition, aimed at students from the Alpes-Maritimes and organized by Telecom Valley, is attracting more and more companies, academic players, and institutions… thus uniting all local players around the dynamism of this proven methodology for raising entrepreneurship awareness. Next meeting: this Friday, March 30 at CICA in Sophia Antipolis for the semi-final of the competition!
Starting an innovative business as a student, without experience and without a real professional network, may seem insurmountable… However, each year in France, the number of students interested in starting a business continues to grow.
Ten years ago, a researcher from INRIA, now deceased, Isabelle Attali, was one of the first to respond to students’ curiosity by imagining a competition for innovative business creation projects, characterized by teams being coached by professionals from the Sophia area: thus was born the Challenge Jeunes Pousses within Telecom Valley.
Since then, hundreds of students have participated in the competition, dozens of multidisciplinary teams have competed, and several companies have emerged thanks to the CJP, which welcomed nearly 80 registrants last fall!
The principle is simple: the edition starts in October, during the school term, and each student registers with or without a project idea. Students with a project have three minutes to convince others to join them and thus form a multidisciplinary team (engineers, marketers, lawyers…) akin to real start-ups.
Because that’s precisely what the Challenge Jeunes Pousses competition offers: a competition experienced by students as a “serious game” where teams build real innovative business creation projects.
The competition is punctuated by quarter-finals, a semi-final, and a grand final in October of the following year. Students have the time and resources (human and financial) to fine-tune their project. If they wish, they can then create the company and be welcomed into the professional network of Telecom Valley, the competition’s organizer.
The Association is taking a turn in the life of the CJP this year for its tenth edition: a new format (professional coaching targeted at the projects’ activities), a new image, new coaching companies (nearly 26 industries support the competition), and new academic partners who also see their interest in it: sparking vocations among students by granting them credits that serve to obtain their diploma.
This competition is an exhilarating adventure of creation, a discovery of the corporate world, a real learning experience for students: working in a team, acquiring knowledge and methods, developing a business plan, building a network…
A competition whose primary objective is to instill the desire to undertake where encounters between professionals and students in the service of innovation take precedence.
