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Cayman Enterprise City’s Enterprise Cayman initiative has recently announced that the Cayman Islands Business Design Competition is now open for submissions. Creative individuals, businesses, and entrepreneurs are invited to take part in the inaugural competition to help jump-start their next business idea.

The Cayman Islands Business Design Competition is just one of the latest initiatives by Enterprise Cayman, which has been designed to provide Caymanians with opportunities within the Cayman Enterprise City special economic zones. The competition will support individuals and teams in kick-starting new business products, services, and/or ideas quickly and provides entrepreneurs and innovators access to professional support networks.

The competition is open to residents of the Cayman Islands over 18, and, thanks to support from Cayman Enterprise City, is completely free for all entrants. “Our hope is that the Business Design Competition will help to further develop Cayman’s supportive ecosystem for new business ventures,” explains Charlie Kirkconnell, CEO of Cayman Enterprise City. “The competition has been designed to foster knowledge-sharing amongst professionals and to help drive business innovation. We’re really looking forward to showcasing the creativity and entrepreneurial talent that exists in abundance here in Cayman.”

Participants are invited to compete in teams or individually and ten finalists will be selected in early February 2021 to take part in a “Design Weekend” and compete in the “Pitch and Test Day” with the help of professional advisors and network of entrepreneurs. Finalists will participate in a series of business workshops and work towards prototyping and testing their idea. The competition utilises design thinking, a five-phase process to help reduce the risk of bringing new products, services, or features to market.

“Design Thinking is extremely useful in tackling difficult problems that are unknown, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by developing ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing,” says Paul Keane, UX Designer and Business Design Competition Project Advisor. “We can’t wait to work with creative individuals and ideas and look forward to seeing new business projects evolve, right here in Cayman.”

After a series of workshops, finalists will then have a month to prepare a 5-minute demo and pitch deck which will be presented to competition judges during the “Pitch and Test Day” at the end of March 2021. Judging criteria includes creativity, potential, feasibility, maintainability, desirability and impact, which are some of the core lenses of innovation, and competitors will compete for cash prizes and three competition awards including Community Impact, Creativity, and Project of the Year.

Members of the public are invited to attend an online information session which is set to take place Thursday, 17 December 2020 at 12:00 pm to RSVP email innovate@designsprintcayman.com. For all competition details and to apply online visit www.designsprintcayman.com.