(Joe Shellard Bright Ideas winner on the left and Eric Brandenburg UK Manager of Marketest)

We recently saw the success of another Bright Ideas competition, which has been running for over eight years. This year’s competition attracted more entries than ever before, with a record breaking number of 171 different entries. The competition encouraged innovative thinking from the 244 students who were keen to get involved and promote entrepreneurship on and off the university campus.

The student’s ideas varied from origin and style, including social enterprises, social enterprise projects and products and services with commercial goals. The enterprising students battled it out for the chance of winning a proportion of the £10,000 prize pot.

The winners and runners up were announced on the 15th February at a pre-planned ceremony, at the University of Westminster. All the first prize winners were awarded £1000 and the runners up £250 to help take their fantastic ideas further. This spectacular ceremony was divided into different categories to award the diverse ideas. The specialist science category sponsored by STEM UEN (the university enterprise network) awarded the science prize winner (Victoria Bloom) and four runners up.

Marketest the online market research company also teamed up with West Focus, by supporting the competition and rewarding Joe Shellard from Royal Holloway University. Joe received a cash prize and £500 tailored market research for his idea to help small theatre companies and schools sell tickets for performances.

When Joe was asked about his idea he said:

 “At the moment, small theatre groups find it difficult to sell tickets through agencies. I’ll be using my prize money to set up a new app to allow potential customers to buy them directly”    

Joe has named his company Adelphi Tickets and has already tried the idea out in a school in Canberra, Australia. The experts at Marketest are excited to help Joe take Adelphi Tickets to the next level through his deserving market research prize.

Marketest are looking forward to continually supporting West Focus's efforts to promote a culture of enterprise and innovation throughout university in the South of England. If you are interested in finding out more information about the Bright Ideas competition, please follow the link.